#[Little reminder that at level 5 skill the percentage goes up to 10%

[mhykvisual]

Mahoyaku 【SSR】Super Success cards

Updated as of:

-January 7th 2021

[iloveyoupittsburghpirates-blog]

Clean It Up, Pittsburgh Pirates

My Dearest Pittsburgh Pirates,

That’s a bizarre way to start the season. You had a rain-out, a snow storm, and two extra innings games. It was actually an ugly week. You escaped going 3-2 with one of the games being postponed until next week. You lost the first two games of the season to the Red Sox in Boston. You bounced back to sweep a sloppy Atlanta Braves team in the first home series of the year. I’d feel better about a sweep if it didn’t feel like they handed it to you. Yesterday you basically won because the Braves’ catcher, Kurt Suzuki, couldn’t catch R.A. Dickey’s knuckleball. He was charged with 3 passed balls plus Dickey threw a wild pitch. Today you did everything in your power to lose the game from being picked off twice, calling for bunts when maybe you shouldn’t, not getting the bunts down, letting Antonio Bastardo pitch, not fielding a grounder that allows the lead run to score in the top of the 10th. Like I said, ugly. I want to feel more positive after a sweep, especially after Starling Marte hit that beautiful walk-off 2 run homer today down a run in the 10th. I just think that if you would’ve played this way against a better team you might have lost 2 out of 3.

People really don’t like Josh Harrison anymore and I honestly don’t understand it. I realize that his OPS the last two seasons were .717 and .699. Certainly below average. I also understand that the 4 year 27 million dollar contract you signed him to makes it seem like he’s overpaid making 7.75 million this year and over 10 million next year. That is a little much but I bet if he hit the free agent market he could get 5 million a year. The fact is JHay is a pretty solid second baseman. I’m glad they are batting him 7th instead of leadoff but I have no issues starting him everyday. Last year, he was 4th in the majors and 1st in the NL in defensive runs saved at second base. His skills were particularly on display on Friday when he made a game saving diving stop on a ball up the middle to start an inning ending double play. The way people talk about JHay you would think he bats .210 a la Rey Ordonez for the Mets back in the day. The reality is he batted .283 last year and .287 the year before. He also added 19 steals while only getting caught four times. I know he doesn’t walk a lot. I know he doesn’t take a lot of pitches. I know he has a putrid slugging percentage. He’s a second baseman. There aren’t many terrific offensive ones in the league. I know Adam Frazier is a “hit machine” who takes more pitches and walks more. He had 3 hits Sunday and started the rally in the 10th that Marte capped off. He also played 2B a total of 23 games before last year and made the error at 3rd base that gave the Braves the lead today. With Josh Bell playing first most of the time, a position he’s barely ever played before, you can’t have the whole right side of your infield be monitored by two guys who don’t play their positions well especially when inducing ground balls is a significant part of your strategy. Is JHay the best 2B in baseball? Obviously not. But is he a solid option and easily the best one of your team? Absolutely.

The biggest concern going into the season was the rotation especially after last year’s Locke/Nicasio/Vogelsong/Niese disaster. This year’s rotation is younger with the average age of the pitchers at 25. Your three top guys were supposed to be the reliable ones. Jameson Taillon and Ivan Nova have held up their end of the bargain. In particular Taillon who looked like the true ace of the staff going seven shutout innings against the Red Sox lineup, one of the best in baseball. Gerrit Cole, who is supposed to be the actual ace of staff, looks like 2016 Cole instead of 2015 Cole and that’s not good. In two starts, Cole is 0-1 with a 6.55 ERA with a 1.64 WHIP. I know it’s only two starts and he fought through 6 innings to earn a Quality Start today.. He did lack control, movement on his fastball, and poise. I’m not sending Cole down the river or anything. It was very telling to watch his two starts compared to Taillon or Nova. Both of them kept calm and worked out of jams while you see Cole seem to lose his cool any time the slightest thing goes wrong. Someone gets a hit because of shift? He’s angry and pouting. You don’t see him celebrating every time it works though. I’m not saying he has to be Bumgarner like stoic or but he needs to control himself. He lets too much affect him. Cole very well might go out and dominate from here on out. I’m just nervous because what I’ve seen so far reminds me of the same Cole that struggled last season with a flat fastball that he leaves up in the zone. I’d be happy for him to turn it around but I’m starting to have my doubts. 

Our other “best player”, Andrew McCutchen, spoke all off season about he has a chip on his shoulder due to the trade rumors that circulated this off-season. Since then, he keeps claiming that he would have a “monster season” to prove the doubters wrong. Now he’s historically a slow starter so it’s not too shocking that his splits are currently .150/.227/.150 for a whopping .377 OPS. He struck out 7 times this week. He only has 3 hits so far and they all came in one game. An exclamation point was put on Cutch’s rough opening week when he came up with 1st and 3rd and one out trailing by a run in the bottom of the 8th. In the least surprising moment of the week, Cutch grounded into an inning ending double play. He’s swinging at bad pitches. He’s moving his back foot way too much on his swing. He almost never takes an outside pitch to the opposite field anymore. It’s not out of the question that we may look back on not trading him this off-season as a huge mistake. If he has a season similar to last season, his trade value is completely gone. Hell, you might not even pick up his 15 million dollar team option next year. That might be a stretch but, much like Cole, I’m seeing the tendencies that were very similar to 2016 Cutch. I’m getting wayyyyy ahead of myself. It’s one bad week. I’m sure he’ll be fine. At least I hope he will be. 

I don’t mean to come off so negative. There’s definitely positives to take away from this week. I mentioned how well Taillon and Nova pitched. Marte and Polanco both look like they could have even bigger seasons. Polanco had 4 hits Saturday and Marte had 4 on Sunday including that walk-off homer. Marte’s splits are an impressive .381/.417/.524 for a .941 OPS. Josh Bell looks like he could have an OBP near .400. Frazier is a really nice bat off the bench and good to start 3-4 times a week. He’s just going to be a liability in the field but if he keeps hitting like this you will have to find him at bats. It shouldn’t be too hard with Jung-ho Kang currently out of the picture. The back of the bullpen looked dominant other than Bastardo who gave up a homer today and a walk-off 3 run homer in Boston on Wednesday. Nicasio, Rivero, Hudson, and Watson all pitched impressively. You will need to make less mistakes if you want to succeed because April is filled with quality teams. You get the Reds at home for 3 games starting tomorrow. That’s a very winnable series. Then it gets rough. You go to Boston on Thursday to make up the rain-out from this week. You follow that by going to Chicago to play the World Champion Cubs for 3 games. The rest of the series this month are against the Cardinals, Yankees, Cubs again, and the Marlins. You could easily fall far behind if you don’t play better. I’m not trying to be mean. I’m trying to be honest. I will say that it’s so nice to have you back. It’s so nice to be able to see you everyday. 3-2 is a solid start. Build off it. It’s a full seven game week so pace yourself. Take it one game at a time. Good luck and I’ll talk to you next week.

                                                                                 Your Tough But Fair Fellow,

                                                                                                   Brad

P.S. Tyler Glasnow will make his first start of the season tomorrow. If he can somehow harness that talent and be productive, it could change the whole outlook on this season. He will certainly have a lot of ups and downs but this rotation could be a lot more interesting than anticipated. Kuhl needs to pitch better than last night but he won’t walk 6 batters too often. Cole has to wake up too but you are in a much better position than you were last year. Glasnow could take it to the next level or he could deplete our bullpen each start if he struggles. Should be fun...

[gravitascivics]

A SPECULATIVE WANDER

[Note:  This posting, the previous several postings, and at least the one to follow are a restatement of what has been addressed previously in this blog.  Some of the sentences to come have been provided before but the concern is that other information has been discovered and an update seems appropriate.  The blog has not changed the overall message – that civics education is seriously deficient – but some of the evidence supporting that message needs updating.]

The last posting attempted to make a connection:  intuitively, there can be a causal relationship among several factors. The factors are political knowledge, consistent political beliefs, political engagement, and civility.  This posting hopefully adds some evidence that while not proving these connections, add weight to their existence.  It wanders through these relationships.

The posting begins in a round about way by looking at the effectiveness of civics education in imparting knowledge, and encouraging certain beliefs, attitudes, and values that are related to civility.  A researcher who has addressed these concerns, in 2013, is Kathleen Hall Jamieson.[1]  A recent academic article reviews her research.  Jamieson’s article reports a certain inconsistency. Overall, she agrees with the message this blog has expressed:  civics education is deficient (more on this below).

In addition to this judgement, though, she reports on some notable exceptions.  Jamison extends hope by citing these more successful efforts:

A randomized field experiment concluded that involvement “in Student Voices [a civics program] significantly boosted students’ confidence in their ability to make informed political decisions, their knowledge about how to register to vote, and their belief that their vote matters.”  Moreover, in a randomized controlled experiment, “participation in Facing History and Ourselves programs result[ed] in:  greater engagement in learning; increased skills for understanding and analyzing history; greater empathy and ethical awareness; increased civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions; and improved ability to recognize racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in themselves and in others; and reduced racist attitudes and self-reported fighting.”  Some civics programs, such as Kids Voting USA [another program], have been shown to create a trickle-up effect, not only increasing the knowledge level and civic dispositions of the young but enhancing their parents’ political knowledge as well.  Evidence also suggest that inclusion of civics education in a curriculum may correlate with a decrease dropout rate.[2]

It this type of instruction that would lead to what Robert Putnam has called social capital[3] among students and, eventually, the general population.

         But Jamieson goes further in her analysis.  She lists a set of consequences to what generally happens with current civics efforts.  They are:

1) neither the federal government nor the states have made high-quality civics education a priority; 2) social studies textbooks may not adequately convey the knowledge or facilitate the development of the skills required of an informed, engaged citizenry; 3) consequential differences in access and outcomes between upper- and lower-class students persist; 4) cutbacks in funding for schools make implementation of changes in any area of the curriculum difficult; and 5) the polarized political climate increases the likelihood that curricular changes will be cast as advancing a partisan agenda.[4]

She provides supportive literature of these conclusions.  This blog agrees as it has made ample comment, for example, on the state of civics textbooks – they are solely concerned with the structural elements of government and other related arrangements such as political parties. Very little of the content deals with issues or problems and the obstacles that exist in devising, enacting, and implementing governmental policy to ameliorate or solve those issues.[5]

So, how does a lack of political knowledge, then, relate to social capital? Using Robert Putnam's take on social capital, as it speaks to communal bonds and cooperative interactions, assuming one accepts the federalist value of cooperative political activities, a public-school curriculum should actively promote this quality.  One can state, social capital amounts to civic civility.  Two ways schools can do this is to impart political and governmental knowledge and to promote citizen participation in governmental affairs, especially at the local level.

On this front, a helpful contextual word or two is in order:  political engagement at the local level is important for two reasons.  The reasons are both practical – grass root action encourages effective strategies that lead to policy implementations[6] – and they are also effective as educating experiences.[7]   A federalist principle is to have as much local governance as is possible.  If done meaningfully and continuously, it ultimately heightens the quality of a democratic society.  

In turn, there are various reasons for this.  For one, an average individual has little chance of affecting politics at a national level.  He or she, though, can engage locally and have an impact.  However, there are enormous forces that act against this principle.  One, locals tend to be very parochial in their inclinations.  Not only are parochial concerns oftentimes anti-democratic, as in biases against minorities, but also hinder a citizen in seeing those developments that originate in other places as affecting local politics and economic conditions.  

Life has become more and more affected not only by national forces, but by global forces as well.  This is a challenge for those who promote local power, local action.  Yet, by getting involved, at the local level, in any national/global movement or effort, one can have meaningful input as to how that issue or problem is addressed.[8]  These issues can extend, for examples, from job lose to foreign, cheap labor to gun regulation to the opioid crisis.

Yes, the forces responsible for these issues can seem beyond anyone's reach. One can easily feel justifiably overwhelmed.  This whole development undermines both local governance and the chances of increasing the social capital or civic civility of any citizenry.  But one can cite two conditions that still make local engagement a powerful political activity.

That is, while all of these nationalist and globalist trends are true, one can make the case that enough political realities are governed and generally handled by local politics, and that local access to government is still the foundation of our democratic project.  And when that is not the case, citizen action in national and international, organized efforts have proven to be successful – look at the effort to curtail smoking, especially in public places.[9]

What of the relationship between political engagement and political knowledge?  That is, engagement can be a motivator, a reason for holding political views and obtaining political knowledge in the first place.  It also assists if one has consistency in one’s thinking about politics. Engagement demands reasonable and logically consistent views, knowledge, and opinions.  

This blog has reported a lack of engagement.  To cite another study along this line, in 2013, the Pew Research Center people conducted one that relies on an extensive telephone survey.  It found 48% of adults engaged in a civic group or activity in the preceding year.  They also found:

§  35% of American adults have recently worked with fellow citizens to solve a problem in their community

§  22% have attended a political meeting on local, town, or school affairs

§  13% have been active members of a group that tries to influence the public or government

§  10% have attended a political rally or speech

§  7% have worked or volunteered for a political party or candidate

§  6% have attended an organized protest[10]

These numbers do not describe an actively engaged citizenry.  If one adds to these figures the percentage of registered voters that voted in any recent election as also cited often in this blog, the result is disappointing.

Given that non-participating citizens reflect a lack of concern over political matters, they tend to be less knowledgeable about politics and governmental policy.  Naturally, one can see these results reflect a less than successful civics education since these adults should have been encouraged in their civics classes to be active citizens. This is not the case.

It is, therefore, no surprise that that segment of the populous that does not engage would express higher degrees of inconsistency in its political beliefs and opinions.  In addition, they have low levels of political knowledge and they tend to be inconsistent in their political thinking as earlier cited research in this blog indicates.

With these conditions as context, one can advance the claim that healthy levels of social capital are dependent on the amount of political knowledge citizens have and the levels of political engagement in which citizens are willing to participate.  Oh yes, and it helps one to contextualize the political and economic realities that are in fact before a nation at a given time when thinking of such factors.  They present a set of challenges that test how well one is disposed to treat others with civic civility; i.e., cooperative political action.  

To round off this connection, the next posting further addresses this relationship via the concept, social capital.

[1] Kathleen H. Jamieson, “The Challenges Facing Civic Education.  Daedalus:  Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Spring 2013, vol. 142, no. 2, 65-83.

[2] Ibid., 72-73.

[3] Robert D. Putnam, Bowling alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY:  Simon & Schuster, 2000).  Reminder: social capital, as a societal quality, is characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.

[4] Kathleen H. Jamieson, “The Challenges Facing Civic Education.  Daedalus:  Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 74-75.

[5] This blog has cited the largest selling American government textbook to make this point. See Willian A. McClenaghan, Magruder’s American Government (Florida Teacher’s Edition) (Boston, MA:  Prentice Hall/Pearson, 2013).

[6] Leslie R. Crutchfield, How Change Happens:  Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t (Hoboken, NJ:  John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2018).

[7] For example, Janet Eyler, “The Power of Experiential Education,” Association of American Colleges and Universities, n. d., accessed December 11, 2018, https://www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/power-experiential-education .

[8] Leslie R. Crutchfield, How Change Happens:  Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t.

[9] Ibid.

[10] “Civic Engagement in a Digital Age,” Pew Research Center, April 4, 2013, accessed May 8, 2019, http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/04/25/civic-engagement-in-the-digital-age/ .

[flauntpage]

DeMar DeRozan's Evolution is Complete

Back in 2016, before the Toronto Raptors eventually triumphed in an unsightly yet memorable first-round battle against the Indiana Pacers, DeMar DeRozan was gobbled whole by Paul George.

The series cemented George's advantage in the league’s pecking order as a more equipped franchise pillar. Not only did he outscore DeRozan by 66 points, he also held Toronto’s leading scorer to 31.9 percent shooting with 19 turnovers and 18 assists in arguably the most frustrating 253 minutes of his bright career.

DeRozan was predictable and edgy. Indiana knew he wouldn’t attack from beyond the arc. So they ducked under screens, refused to bite at pump fakes, and closed out soft, daring him to beat them with the same contested long twos he used to stab opponents throughout the regular season. In other words, they wanted to strangle DeRozan with his own two hands, and it worked.

A few weeks later, DeRozan's Raptors advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals. Then he won Olympic Gold on Team USA. Then he had a monstrous All-NBA season in 2016-17—during which only two players (Russell Westbrook and DeMarcus Cousins) owned higher usage rates and two others (LeBron James and Stephen Curry) scored more points—but that series against the Pacers forced Toronto to confront a harsh truth about its most talented player.

Because, fair or not, seven games is all it takes to cement a reputation. Seven games is all we need to verify what's already suspected. As lethal as he was, that first-round series confirmed to critics that Derozan was little more than a one-dimensional scorer whose strengths don't translate in the most meaningful moments.

The NBA's revolutionary obsession with three-point shooting and ball movement were both antithetical to DeRozan’s nature. Up until this season, he struggled to adjust but still managed the seemingly impossible feat of maintaining his grip on some sort of retrograde stardom.

But now, 39 games into his ninth campaign, with more efficient numbers on arguably the most dangerous Raptors team in franchise history, DeRozan's finally adopted a more balanced game, one that allows his impact to stretch beyond contested daggers from the right elbow. The result is a shining MVP candidate whose improvement affects areas of the game that ultimately decides wins and losses in today’s NBA.

“The experience of going through that [Indiana series]...I’ve seen every year [since], his level has picked up,” Raptors head coach Dwane Casey told VICE Sports. “The moment hasn’t bothered him. The physicality, the blitzes, the different defenses, he’s seeing it all. And that’s why I say now I’m seeing a different DeMar because he’s gone through all that. That’s the process you have to go through to be a great player in this league. You’ve got to go through some failures and some hard times to get to where you want to go.”

Photo by Kevin Sousa - USA TODAY Sports

The biggest change can be found at the three-point line. Long vilified for his unwillingness to let it fly from distance—he attempted 198 more two-point field goals than any other player over the last two seasons, leading the league in that category both years—DeRozan has finally convinced himself that threatening a defense from 24 feet is more damaging than from 19, not just because three is more than two, but the positive effect it’s had on teammates is undeniable.

“If Kyle runs a screen-and-roll, him and JV, my man’s gotta make a decision. Are you gonna leave me now or are you gonna go help?” DeRozan said while slumped against a wall at a Raptors practice in Midtown Manhattan. “So it gives us opportunities to be able to get an easy screen and roll to the big, a dump off pass, so I think it’s more so for everybody else as well. That’s me wanting to be better not just for myself but for my teammates as well.”

During summer months early in his career, DeRozan would shoot somewhere between 100 and 200 threes every day with his longtime trainer Chris Farr. Heading into this year, though, that volume more than doubled, often reaching 500 attempts. As he fed him over and over, Farr would tease the three-time All-Star: Man, I’m passing you all these balls to shoot threes and you never take one!

“He’s always had the green light to [shoot threes] but he always had that crutch of getting to his sweet spot. But now he’s more comfortable,” Casey told VICE Sports. “Right now teams probably don’t think it’s for real. But I’ve seen enough in practice and in summer times working with him to know that this is for real, and he’s got to continue to do it."

According to Synergy Sports, DeRozan has initiated more high pick-and-rolls where a defender goes under the screen than anyone else, a category he led the league in by a wide margin last season. Now, instead of dribbling into a long two or waiting for his man to rescreen so he can try and draw a foul in the paint, DeRozan is more willing to take what the defense gives.

He hasn’t erased the mid-range from his palette and his game won’t remind you of Klay Thompson's anytime soon. But the percentage of his shots that are contested is down from last year, as is the percentage of shots that are long twos, from 31 percent down to 18, per Basketball-Reference. DeRozan doesn’t acknowledge a conscious change, but the shift is revelatory. He’s launched at least five threes 30 times in his entire career. Nine of those games have come this year.

“Last year I took a lot of things personally, where people say you wouldn’t make it if you don’t shoot threes in the NBA, you know? And I averaged close to 30 at a high rate,” DeRozan said. “It was one of them things where I always took challenges on. I always felt like nobody could depict how good I am because I can’t do a certain thing. That was my mindset for the longest time. I just got to a point where I was like ‘Man, just go out there and play.’ I don’t got to prove nothing to nobody anymore. Just go out there and play basketball.”

With the three-point shot now in his back pocket, DeRozan is well-positioned to elevate his stature in a league that, for the most part, he’s already conquered.

Let’s compare his game to a golfer's. DeRozan could always putt. He mastered how to get out of the sand, and stick greens from a deep rough. But instead of blasting away at Par 5’s with a trusty driver, he rarely approached the tee with anything heavier than a three-wood. It was a self-handicap that lowered his individual ceiling.

This year he’s ripping that driver without any thought. If his basketball skill-set actually did translate to a golf course, he’d finish a seven-time major winner.

During a recent blowout win against the Milwaukee Bucks—the same team he torched for a franchise-record 52 points on New Year’s Day, an awesome performance that forced his giddy teammates to stare up at the jumbotron every time he made a basket—Casey remembers one play where DeRozan snatched an offensive rebound with his back to the basket, right in front of Milwaukee’s bench.

He turned, toed the line, and nailed it with fingertips in his face. It reminded Casey of Dale Ellis, who led the league in three-point percentage back when Toronto's head coach was an assistant with the Seattle Supersonics.

Since they stumbled towards respectability by trading Rudy Gay (and not trading Kyle Lowry) in a failed effort to tank back in 2013, the Raptors have always outscored their opponent with DeRozan on the floor, typically by two or three points per 100 possessions. When he sat, they roared behind Lowry, who spearheaded bench units that were appropriately referred to as “Lowry + Bench” and behaved like a wrecking ball.

But things are different this year. DeRozan is Toronto’s best and most important player. Some of that’s due to the emergence of youngsters at Lowry’s position (Fred VanVleet and Delon Wright are as pugnacious as they are smooth), but the primary reason is DeRozan’s development from caveat All-Star to well-rounded first option.

When he’s on the floor, Toronto outscores opponents by 8.5 points per 100 possessions, a number that ranks in the 90th percentile, per Cleaning the Glass. It’s the sort of resume held by a championship favorite—in any other time than now, during which the Golden State Warriors have four top-15 players in their starting lineup.

But the more surprising statistic is how Toronto plays when DeRozan is on the floor and Lowry is not. Not only does his usage rise by nearly 11 percent without any drop in his True Shooting, but Toronto’s offense goes from extremely good to The NBA’s Website Might Be Broken. It’s a reality that speaks not only to arguably the most exuberant and diversified bench this organization has ever had, but DeRozan’s comfort demolishing second units like 36-year-old Barry Bonds in a slow-pitch softball league.

The Raptors win with defense when DeRozan sits—they’re never worse on that end than when he’s on the floor—but their offense drops by nearly 10 points per 100 possessions. Overall, they’re better when he plays for just the second time in his career, and the first in five seasons (going back to Casey’s first year in Toronto, a lockout-shortened nightmare).

These on-off splits help frame a respectable case for DeRozan actually contending for MVP, in a pool that also includes James Harden, LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Kevin Curry. No matter how you frame the argument, DeRozan checks off the same number of boxes—be it statistics, narrative, his team’s success, or, you know, overall value.

“I think he gets overlooked a lot. I don’t know why,” Raptors guard Norm Powell, who idolized DeRozan before they were teammates, told VICE Sports. “You compare stats to everyone that’s in the MVP race and he’s right there with them. I think he definitely should be considered an MVP candidate. When you watch him play there’s a lot of things where you shake your head in amazement. How did he do that? How did he make that shot?”

The increased variance in DeRozan’s attack helps, but so too does his improvement as a playmaker, someone actively looking to create for others, be it with a slick pocket-pass to Jonas Valanciunas or not needing a screen to beat his man off the dribble, force help, then find Serge Ibaka in the corner for three.

He demands active viewing. A threat in myriad ways who spent the summer figuring out how he can cut down on risky jump passes that turn into turnovers, DeRozan is seeing the floor with more clarity and anticipating defensive rotations. His assist-to-turnover ratio is at an all-time high, right above Harden and LeBron and just outside the top 10 among players whose usage rate is at least 25 percent.

“He’s more of a quasi-point guard once he’s in there by himself," Casey told VICE Sports. "That has helped him as much as anything else. He’s controlling, he’s not depending on another point guard to run the show, so he’s making decisions. He’s making the plays, bringing the ball down the floor, initiating the offense, calling out the offense, so that has helped him out too. It doesn’t get to him and the ball stops. He gives it up, the ball keeps moving to other guys, so there’s kind of a domino effect with him being in there by himself now, with the style of play we’re playing.”

DeRozan treats the ball like burning coal when opponents blitz him high off a screen. Even though somewhere in the back of his mind he probably knows he could hit the shot, DeRozan gets off the ball fast, either to hit his roll man or make a trickier skip pass to the opposite corner.

“He can pass the ball extremely well,” Raptors wing C.J. Miles told VICE Sports. “Way more than I think he’s given credit for. People will look at the stat sheet and see he has five or six assists and they’ll just chalk it up to him having the ball a lot and you’re bound to get them. But he makes plays. He makes the right plays. He finds people. He has to be willing to do that because he knows people will come after him more because he’s able to score.”

Before he scored 35 points in an overtime win against the Brooklyn Nets on Monday night, I asked Nets head coach Kenny Atkinson what’s changed the most about DeRozan’s game this year. He lowered his head, sighed, then held his index finger and thumb about an inch apart.

“He’s in that money zone right now, just playing great basketball. ” Atkinson said. “And you know what I like about him. He defends...He plays both ways.”

DeRozan gets caught on screens and screws up the occasional switch, but his baseline play on the defensive end is more competent than it used to be. He’s stifling ball-handlers in the open floor, curbing drives, recognizing where he’s supposed to be as a help defender and recognizing who he can and can’t help off of. Here he is late in a game Toronto leads by 20, sprinting back to swat Khris Middleton’s corner three.

Or, in a more complicated scenario, watch how he communicates a switch with VanVleet against Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks.

DeRozan takes away Dirk’s shot, forces him to give it up, seamlessly switches back onto Wesley Matthews, then forces a difficult fallway as the shot clock expires. This was not an easy play.

“It’s not that DeMar DeRozan can’t guard. He can guard. It’s a lot of times, guys who play huge minutes, they’re gonna pick their spots to rest and it’s not gonna be on the offensive end. Most guys rest on the defensive end,” Casey said. “And not saying that he’s resting, but he’s showing the level of defense that he can play that we need, we gotta have, for us to be successful as a team, where a team can’t say ‘We’re going at DeMar DeRozan’ or we’re always searching for a matchup for him. DeMar has length, he’s quick, he has athleticism, he’s tough, so there’s no reason why he can’t be the defender he’s been in the last month or so.”

Whether he’s trailing to contest a shot from the shooter’s rearview or staying low on the perimeter to stick with some of his max-contract colleagues (Casey put DeRozan on George at the start of a recent game against the Oklahoma City Thunder), there’s been crucial development on a nightly basis. It's evolutionary.

"I’d rather have a 3-and-D guy than a mid-range and no D guy," Casey said.

Entering 2017-18, coming off a second-straight playoff run that was less impressive than how he performed during the regular season, DeRozan felt rigid. Even his most stunning performances had a “Doesn’t Shoot Threes” scarlet letter stamped on them. Today, that stamp is gone.

“How do you not talk about [DeRozan’s MVP candidacy]? How do you not mention his name? And he’s been on the All-Star team, but like, how do you not talk about him?” Miles said. “I think it’s based on the fact that, being where we are in Canada, it’s not the same coverage.”

He smirks: “It sucks. And at the same time it fits his personality too, though. He’s laid back. He’s not so much worried about the hoopla—not to say he wouldn’t want an MVP trophy, I’m pretty sure anybody would want that—but his personality is like ‘I’m gonna do my job, I’m gonna get it done.’ You don’t see him out there yelling. Even the way he plays, it’s controlled. Smooth. Not a lot of ra-ra stuff.”

To actually win the Most Valuable Player award, DeRozan would not only have to maintain some unsustainable shooting numbers—in his last 10 games, he's made over half of his threes on just over 50 attempts—but the Raptors would need to finish with the top seed in the Eastern Conference. That’s not impossible. But even if it doesn't happen, DeRozan has already begun to reshape his reputation and raise what's possible for his team.

As ruthless as he’s been swimming against the current, DeRozan is finally letting the river take him where he needs to go. If he keeps it up, disappointing past performances like the one against Indiana will no longer tell the story of DeMar DeRozan. They’ll turn into stepping stones, crucial life lessons that have allowed him to blossom into the top-tier, all-around weapon he currently is.

Winning a championship would be nice, but he instead should be judged by his willingness (and ability) to adapt as the world changes around him. Even if the Raptors fail to reach the conference finals, DeRozan can’t be indicted if he course corrected his weaknesses and turned them into favorable traits.

“My father is a pastor, and he told me a setback is a set up for a comeback,” Farr said. “When DeMar came in the league he was a dunking machine who couldn’t shoot. He’s been an All-Star, All-NBA, and an Olympian, without a three. His team went to the conference finals without a three. So if he can hit the three and it becomes a weapon for him? The sky is the limit.”

DeMar DeRozan's Evolution is Complete published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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DeMar DeRozan’s Evolution is Complete

Back in 2016, before the Toronto Raptors eventually triumphed in an unsightly yet memorable first-round battle against the Indiana Pacers, DeMar DeRozan was gobbled whole by Paul George.

The series cemented George’s advantage in the league’s pecking order as a more equipped franchise pillar. Not only did he outscore DeRozan by 66 points, he also held Toronto’s leading scorer to 31.9 percent shooting with 19 turnovers and 18 assists in arguably the most frustrating 253 minutes of his bright career.

DeRozan was predictable and edgy. Indiana knew he wouldn’t attack from beyond the arc. So they ducked under screens, refused to bite at pump fakes, and closed out soft, daring him to beat them with the same contested long twos he used to stab opponents throughout the regular season. In other words, they wanted to strangle DeRozan with his own two hands, and it worked.

A few weeks later, DeRozan’s Raptors advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals. Then he won Olympic Gold on Team USA. Then he had a monstrous All-NBA season in 2016-17—during which only two players (Russell Westbrook and DeMarcus Cousins) owned higher usage rates and two others (LeBron James and Stephen Curry) scored more points—but that series against the Pacers forced Toronto to confront a harsh truth about its most talented player.

Because, fair or not, seven games is all it takes to cement a reputation. Seven games is all we need to verify what’s already suspected. As lethal as he was, that first-round series confirmed to critics that Derozan was little more than a one-dimensional scorer whose strengths don’t translate in the most meaningful moments.

The NBA’s revolutionary obsession with three-point shooting and ball movement were both antithetical to DeRozan’s nature. Up until this season, he struggled to adjust but still managed the seemingly impossible feat of maintaining his grip on some sort of retrograde stardom.

But now, 39 games into his ninth campaign, with more efficient numbers on arguably the most dangerous Raptors team in franchise history, DeRozan’s finally adopted a more balanced game, one that allows his impact to stretch beyond contested daggers from the right elbow. The result is a shining MVP candidate whose improvement affects areas of the game that ultimately decides wins and losses in today’s NBA.

“The experience of going through that [Indiana series]…I’ve seen every year [since], his level has picked up,” Raptors head coach Dwane Casey told VICE Sports. “The moment hasn’t bothered him. The physicality, the blitzes, the different defenses, he’s seeing it all. And that’s why I say now I’m seeing a different DeMar because he’s gone through all that. That’s the process you have to go through to be a great player in this league. You’ve got to go through some failures and some hard times to get to where you want to go.”

Photo by Kevin Sousa – USA TODAY Sports

The biggest change can be found at the three-point line. Long vilified for his unwillingness to let it fly from distance—he attempted 198 more two-point field goals than any other player over the last two seasons, leading the league in that category both years—DeRozan has finally convinced himself that threatening a defense from 24 feet is more damaging than from 19, not just because three is more than two, but the positive effect it’s had on teammates is undeniable.

“If Kyle runs a screen-and-roll, him and JV, my man’s gotta make a decision. Are you gonna leave me now or are you gonna go help?” DeRozan said while slumped against a wall at a Raptors practice in Midtown Manhattan. “So it gives us opportunities to be able to get an easy screen and roll to the big, a dump off pass, so I think it’s more so for everybody else as well. That’s me wanting to be better not just for myself but for my teammates as well.”

During summer months early in his career, DeRozan would shoot somewhere between 100 and 200 threes every day with his longtime trainer Chris Farr. Heading into this year, though, that volume more than doubled, often reaching 500 attempts. As he fed him over and over, Farr would tease the three-time All-Star: Man, I’m passing you all these balls to shoot threes and you never take one!

“He’s always had the green light to [shoot threes] but he always had that crutch of getting to his sweet spot. But now he’s more comfortable,” Casey told VICE Sports. “Right now teams probably don’t think it’s for real. But I’ve seen enough in practice and in summer times working with him to know that this is for real, and he’s got to continue to do it.”

According to Synergy Sports, DeRozan has initiated more high pick-and-rolls where a defender goes under the screen than anyone else, a category he led the league in by a wide margin last season. Now, instead of dribbling into a long two or waiting for his man to rescreen so he can try and draw a foul in the paint, DeRozan is more willing to take what the defense gives.

He hasn’t erased the mid-range from his palette and his game won’t remind you of Klay Thompson’s anytime soon. But the percentage of his shots that are contested is down from last year, as is the percentage of shots that are long twos, from 31 percent down to 18, per Basketball-Reference. DeRozan doesn’t acknowledge a conscious change, but the shift is revelatory. He’s launched at least five threes 30 times in his entire career. Nine of those games have come this year.

“Last year I took a lot of things personally, where people say you wouldn’t make it if you don’t shoot threes in the NBA, you know? And I averaged close to 30 at a high rate,” DeRozan said. “It was one of them things where I always took challenges on. I always felt like nobody could depict how good I am because I can’t do a certain thing. That was my mindset for the longest time. I just got to a point where I was like ‘Man, just go out there and play.’ I don’t got to prove nothing to nobody anymore. Just go out there and play basketball.”

With the three-point shot now in his back pocket, DeRozan is well-positioned to elevate his stature in a league that, for the most part, he’s already conquered.

Let’s compare his game to a golfer’s. DeRozan could always putt. He mastered how to get out of the sand, and stick greens from a deep rough. But instead of blasting away at Par 5’s with a trusty driver, he rarely approached the tee with anything heavier than a three-wood. It was a self-handicap that lowered his individual ceiling.

This year he’s ripping that driver without any thought. If his basketball skill-set actually did translate to a golf course, he’d finish a seven-time major winner.

During a recent blowout win against the Milwaukee Bucks—the same team he torched for a franchise-record 52 points on New Year’s Day, an awesome performance that forced his giddy teammates to stare up at the jumbotron every time he made a basket—Casey remembers one play where DeRozan snatched an offensive rebound with his back to the basket, right in front of Milwaukee’s bench.

He turned, toed the line, and nailed it with fingertips in his face. It reminded Casey of Dale Ellis, who led the league in three-point percentage back when Toronto’s head coach was an assistant with the Seattle Supersonics.

Since they stumbled towards respectability by trading Rudy Gay (and not trading Kyle Lowry) in a failed effort to tank back in 2013, the Raptors have always outscored their opponent with DeRozan on the floor, typically by two or three points per 100 possessions. When he sat, they roared behind Lowry, who spearheaded bench units that were appropriately referred to as “Lowry + Bench” and behaved like a wrecking ball.

But things are different this year. DeRozan is Toronto’s best and most important player. Some of that’s due to the emergence of youngsters at Lowry’s position (Fred VanVleet and Delon Wright are as pugnacious as they are smooth), but the primary reason is DeRozan’s development from caveat All-Star to well-rounded first option.

When he’s on the floor, Toronto outscores opponents by 8.5 points per 100 possessions, a number that ranks in the 90th percentile, per Cleaning the Glass. It’s the sort of resume held by a championship favorite—in any other time than now, during which the Golden State Warriors have four top-15 players in their starting lineup.

But the more surprising statistic is how Toronto plays when DeRozan is on the floor and Lowry is not. Not only does his usage rise by nearly 11 percent without any drop in his True Shooting, but Toronto’s offense goes from extremely good to The NBA’s Website Might Be Broken. It’s a reality that speaks not only to arguably the most exuberant and diversified bench this organization has ever had, but DeRozan’s comfort demolishing second units like 36-year-old Barry Bonds in a slow-pitch softball league.

The Raptors win with defense when DeRozan sits—they’re never worse on that end than when he’s on the floor—but their offense drops by nearly 10 points per 100 possessions. Overall, they’re better when he plays for just the second time in his career, and the first in five seasons (going back to Casey’s first year in Toronto, a lockout-shortened nightmare).

These on-off splits help frame a respectable case for DeRozan actually contending for MVP, in a pool that also includes James Harden, LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Kevin Curry. No matter how you frame the argument, DeRozan checks off the same number of boxes—be it statistics, narrative, his team’s success, or, you know, overall value.

“I think he gets overlooked a lot. I don’t know why,” Raptors guard Norm Powell, who idolized DeRozan before they were teammates, told VICE Sports. “You compare stats to everyone that’s in the MVP race and he’s right there with them. I think he definitely should be considered an MVP candidate. When you watch him play there’s a lot of things where you shake your head in amazement. How did he do that? How did he make that shot?”

The increased variance in DeRozan’s attack helps, but so too does his improvement as a playmaker, someone actively looking to create for others, be it with a slick pocket-pass to Jonas Valanciunas or not needing a screen to beat his man off the dribble, force help, then find Serge Ibaka in the corner for three.

He demands active viewing. A threat in myriad ways who spent the summer figuring out how he can cut down on risky jump passes that turn into turnovers, DeRozan is seeing the floor with more clarity and anticipating defensive rotations. His assist-to-turnover ratio is at an all-time high, right above Harden and LeBron and just outside the top 10 among players whose usage rate is at least 25 percent.

“He’s more of a quasi-point guard once he’s in there by himself,” Casey told VICE Sports. “That has helped him as much as anything else. He’s controlling, he’s not depending on another point guard to run the show, so he’s making decisions. He’s making the plays, bringing the ball down the floor, initiating the offense, calling out the offense, so that has helped him out too. It doesn’t get to him and the ball stops. He gives it up, the ball keeps moving to other guys, so there’s kind of a domino effect with him being in there by himself now, with the style of play we’re playing.”

DeRozan treats the ball like burning coal when opponents blitz him high off a screen. Even though somewhere in the back of his mind he probably knows he could hit the shot, DeRozan gets off the ball fast, either to hit his roll man or make a trickier skip pass to the opposite corner.

“He can pass the ball extremely well,” Raptors wing C.J. Miles told VICE Sports. “Way more than I think he’s given credit for. People will look at the stat sheet and see he has five or six assists and they’ll just chalk it up to him having the ball a lot and you’re bound to get them. But he makes plays. He makes the right plays. He finds people. He has to be willing to do that because he knows people will come after him more because he’s able to score.”

Before he scored 35 points in an overtime win against the Brooklyn Nets on Monday night, I asked Nets head coach Kenny Atkinson what’s changed the most about DeRozan’s game this year. He lowered his head, sighed, then held his index finger and thumb about an inch apart.

“He’s in that money zone right now, just playing great basketball. ” Atkinson said. “And you know what I like about him. He defends…He plays both ways.”

DeRozan gets caught on screens and screws up the occasional switch, but his baseline play on the defensive end is more competent than it used to be. He’s stifling ball-handlers in the open floor, curbing drives, recognizing where he’s supposed to be as a help defender and recognizing who he can and can’t help off of. Here he is late in a game Toronto leads by 20, sprinting back to swat Khris Middleton’s corner three.

Or, in a more complicated scenario, watch how he communicates a switch with VanVleet against Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks.

DeRozan takes away Dirk’s shot, forces him to give it up, seamlessly switches back onto Wesley Matthews, then forces a difficult fallway as the shot clock expires. This was not an easy play.

“It’s not that DeMar DeRozan can’t guard. He can guard. It’s a lot of times, guys who play huge minutes, they’re gonna pick their spots to rest and it’s not gonna be on the offensive end. Most guys rest on the defensive end,” Casey said. “And not saying that he’s resting, but he’s showing the level of defense that he can play that we need, we gotta have, for us to be successful as a team, where a team can’t say ‘We’re going at DeMar DeRozan’ or we’re always searching for a matchup for him. DeMar has length, he’s quick, he has athleticism, he’s tough, so there’s no reason why he can’t be the defender he’s been in the last month or so.”

Whether he’s trailing to contest a shot from the shooter’s rearview or staying low on the perimeter to stick with some of his max-contract colleagues (Casey put DeRozan on George at the start of a recent game against the Oklahoma City Thunder), there’s been crucial development on a nightly basis. It’s evolutionary.

“I’d rather have a 3-and-D guy than a mid-range and no D guy,” Casey said.

Entering 2017-18, coming off a second-straight playoff run that was less impressive than how he performed during the regular season, DeRozan felt rigid. Even his most stunning performances had a “Doesn’t Shoot Threes” scarlet letter stamped on them. Today, that stamp is gone.

“How do you not talk about [DeRozan’s MVP candidacy]? How do you not mention his name? And he’s been on the All-Star team, but like, how do you not talk about him?” Miles said. “I think it’s based on the fact that, being where we are in Canada, it’s not the same coverage.”

He smirks: “It sucks. And at the same time it fits his personality too, though. He’s laid back. He’s not so much worried about the hoopla—not to say he wouldn’t want an MVP trophy, I’m pretty sure anybody would want that—but his personality is like ‘I’m gonna do my job, I’m gonna get it done.’ You don’t see him out there yelling. Even the way he plays, it’s controlled. Smooth. Not a lot of ra-ra stuff.”

To actually win the Most Valuable Player award, DeRozan would not only have to maintain some unsustainable shooting numbers—in his last 10 games, he’s made over half of his threes on just over 50 attempts—but the Raptors would need to finish with the top seed in the Eastern Conference. That’s not impossible. But even if it doesn’t happen, DeRozan has already begun to reshape his reputation and raise what’s possible for his team.

As ruthless as he’s been swimming against the current, DeRozan is finally letting the river take him where he needs to go. If he keeps it up, disappointing past performances like the one against Indiana will no longer tell the story of DeMar DeRozan. They’ll turn into stepping stones, crucial life lessons that have allowed him to blossom into the top-tier, all-around weapon he currently is.

Winning a championship would be nice, but he instead should be judged by his willingness (and ability) to adapt as the world changes around him. Even if the Raptors fail to reach the conference finals, DeRozan can’t be indicted if he course corrected his weaknesses and turned them into favorable traits.

“My father is a pastor, and he told me a setback is a set up for a comeback,” Farr said. “When DeMar came in the league he was a dunking machine who couldn’t shoot. He’s been an All-Star, All-NBA, and an Olympian, without a three. His team went to the conference finals without a three. So if he can hit the three and it becomes a weapon for him? The sky is the limit.”

DeMar DeRozan’s Evolution is Complete syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6