Toronto – Make something happen. Be aggressive. Stay aggressive. Don’t dwell on the shots you missed, focus on the one’s you’re going to make.
Be hyper aware that if you can force the action, if you can require the defence to react to you, opportunities become available for your teammates.
And if defences don’t react?
Make them pay.
That is DeMar DeRozan’s game in a nutshell. It’s his personality too.
He doesn’t shirk responsibility, he craves it. He’s not scared of big moments; he wants to create them.
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It has made him the greatest scorer in Toronto Raptors franchise history and many times has been the difference between his team winning games and his team losing them. On Sunday night in Washington DeRozan scored 35 points for the Raptors. Normally – historically – that’s been a good thing.
Over the past five years Toronto is 26-9 when he’s put up 35 points or more. His big scoring games don’t typically come at the expense of team success, quite often they’ve been the reason for it.
But there can be too much of a good thing, or simply too much.
As the Raptors began sorting through the wreckage of their Game 4 loss that left their first-round series with the Washington Wizards tied at 2-2 and began to adjust their attention to a pivotal Game 5 on Wednesday it was clear the balance had been tipped.
The Wizards had fought their way back into the game – with the aid of a steady stream of Raptors turnovers and sloppy transition defence – and the moment was about to be lost.
DeRozan’s nature demanded he act. He’s not a look the other way type of guy. Not with this team, not on his watch.
"I just try to go out there and be aggressive," he said, sounding a bit groggy barely 12 hours after the Raptors fourth-quarter meltdown Sunday as he tried to make sense of a lost weekend. "Sometimes you can’t give up on it if you miss two shots, three shots in a row. You’ve got to continue to go out there and be aggressive."
It’s easy to dismiss it as ‘hero ball’ – where a player wants to put himself in position to make plays and win games even if they aren’t the winning play, the smart play.
But if anyone thinks that’s what DeRozan is about, they haven’t been paying attention.
A year ago the Raptors were trailing 2-1 to the Milwaukee Bucks and desperately needed a win on the road. Nothing was happening offensively. The series was teetering and DeRozan put his shoulder into it scoring 33 of the Raptors 87 points in grimy, throwback game that demanded someone break it open with sheer offensive will. His usage rate that afternoon was 36.3. Two games later – again on the road – DeRozan answered the bell with a 32-point outing when the Raptors managed only 92 in the close out game. His usage rate was 39.1 in that one.
Two years ago? Game 7 at home against the Indiana Pacers?
In arguably the most ‘must-win’ game of the DeRozan-Lowry era the Raptors shooting guard missed 22 shots.
The Raptors got the win but DeRozan was never frightened of the consequences had they not. He was going to ‘empty the clip’.
But that doesn’t make him a selfish player. He’s never been one.
He helped lift the Raptors among the NBA’s elite by shouldering a heavy load – his usage rate was third highest in the league a season ago as he picked up the slack left when Kyle Lowry was hurt and the rotation was remade after the trade deadline.
But this season when it became apparent that the Raptors needed to evolve and get away from depending on him to score as much, DeRozan was ready. He touched the ball about 15 per cent less and passed the ball about 20 per cent more. He did it willingly and with an open mind.
The Raptors had their best season ever. In their first game of the series DeRozan’s usage rate was a modest – for a primary scorer – 25 per cent.
He is invested.
But then the offence gets bogged down, the score is tied and there are a finite number of possessions left – like when the Raptors and Wizards were tied with 5:40 to play in Game 4 – and DeRozan felt the need to finish the job. His usage rate – 46.8 – was the highest of his post-season career. In that sense it was an aberration, but the instinct was not.
"It’s just one of them nights where you find yourself — sometimes you come off great, sometimes you could find yourself looking back and wishing you could take a few shots back that could have been, that you probably felt was forced," he said. "[Sunday] night was that. But we came out aggressive, but with that, it led to a lot of mistakes."
The need to have DeRozan bail them out in the clutch is something the Raptors have devoted a full year to weaning themselves from.
"I’m sure as a competitor, when he doesn’t see the shot go in or guys making the right [play], then [he says] ‘okay, I’ve gotta do it,’" said Raptors head coach Dwane Casey. "He doesn’t have to do that. That’s why we changed what we do, that’s why we changed our offence, is to make sure the ball’s moving, clicking. Again, it’s one of those things, sometimes you fall back into that mindset, which, at some point in the shot clock you have to have that, but not as early in the shot clock as we’ve been doing it. And we explained that and we showed that today and we’re gonna work on it again [Tuesday]."
To his credit, DeRozan doesn’t relinquish responsibility easily. In the heat of the moment relieving him of some of it isn’t something to be taken lightly.
Delon Wright, the third-year guard who has played some of his best basketball in the series but who was tentative in some key moments down the stretch – passing up a pair of open threes; being slow to initiate the offence – recognized the need for him and others to actively wrest some of that burden DeRozan so determinedly takes on.
"He’s our main scorer [so] sometimes I defer to it," said Wright. "…I think sometimes we have to keep that balance of me handling sometimes and him off the ball.
"It’s easier said than done," Wright added. "Just to try to take the ball out of his hands… it’s something that we’ve been doing all year, just letting the ball find him later in the shot clock, and let him go to work, instead of them loading up [on him] the whole shot clock."
But doing it on the proverbial Tuesday night in February in Orlando – when the stakes are low – is another thing entirely from doing it on the road in the playoffs with seasons, reputations and conceivably even careers on the line.
That DeRozan is willing to do it is a great strength. Like a great hitter in a long slump he still wants to chance to be at the plate with the game on the line. DeRozan doesn’t let his misses interfere with the possibility of his next make.
"You can’t just let a couple shots depict if you need to get off a shot late in the game, if your teammates [are] looking for you to get a shot or get to the basket or make a play," he said. "You can’t let that turn you, make you timid in the moments."
The Raptors should celebrate that they have a player of DeRozan’s caliber willing to put himself out there, prepared to fail.
The next test of DeRozan’s resolve comes in Game 5 and will require him finding the courage to let his teammates help him if he does.
