Nylon Calculus: Is DeMar DeRozan the next Michael Jordan?

First of all, to answer the somewhat inflammatory question posed in the headline — no, DeMar DeRozan is not the next Michael Jordan. At least not in terms of marketing potential, Ringz, Hall-of-Fame legacy, or global icon status. But there is something Jordan-esque in his explosive start to the 2016-17 season.

Before this season, DeMar DeRozan was a volume scorer of middling efficiency, one who went about the business of scoring with athleticism and energy applied inside the 3-point arc. Across the first seven seasons of his career, DeRozan averaged 19.2 points per game, never taking more than 15 percent of his shots from behind the 3-point line, and making a grand total of 28.3 of those 3s. He was a slasher and a mid-range shooter, with an effective post game against the right matchup.

Through the first nine games of this season, DeRozan is averaging a league-leading 34.0 points per game. His true shooting percentage is a career-high 59.4 percent, and he’s made just 3-of-14 3-point attempts. DeRozan is largely playing the same game, just delivering absurdly different results.

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Dominating inside the arc was how Michael Jordan built his legacy. As his career wound down, it was his post game, his footwork, and his mid-range jumper that he leaned on. The game has evolved since Jordan’s era and it’s rare now to see volume scoring from a perimeter player that comes almost entirely from inside the arc. This may not be the first thing you think of when “The Next Jordan” is mentioned, but it’s as strong a defining characteristic of his game as you can find in the stats.

And DeMar DeRozan has been doing a pretty impressive Jordan impersonation this season.

To this point, 57 percent of DeRozan’s points have come on 2-point baskets outside the restricted area. Plot that against his true shooting percentage and you can see DeRozan is an outlier even when compared to Jordan and some of the other players in that mold — Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, and Dwyane Wade.

Only includes seasons from those players where they averaged at least 20 points per game. Only two seasons are shown for Jordan because the NBA doesn’t have shot location data available before the 1996-97 season.

You can see that even before this season, DeRozan clearly belonged stylistically among this group of players. His true shooting percentage was never quite as high as the peak seasons from Wade or Bryant, but the percentage of his points scored from this area was similar to Bryant and the two Jordan seasons we have data for. Obviously, the incredible efficiency with which DeRozan has scored inside the arc this season is what makes him such an outlier, even compared to Jordan. Keep in mind that DeRozan is also scoring 34.0 points per game, higher than any season shown here except Kobe Bryant’s 2005-06 campaign.

Interestingly, a better comparison for what DeRozan is doing this season might be something like Dirk Nowitzki’s 2006-07 MVP season. That year, Dirk posted a 60.5 true shooting percentage and scored 47 percent of his points inside the arc but outside the restricted area.

The obvious question is whether DeRozan can keep this up. His 2-point percentage is about nine percentage points higher than it was last season and about four percentage points above his previous career high. DeRozan is currently attempting 22.7 2-pointers per game, making 54.9 percent of them. Only 88 guards in NBA history have averaged more than 15 2-pointers a game, making better than 50 percent of them for a season, and the only players to do it in the last two decades were Jordan, Wade, Bryant, and Tony Parker.

It seems more than likely that there is some regression coming for DeRozan — both on his shooting efficiency and on his mid-range usage. Still, even if he comes down quite a bit on both fronts, this is a special season. DeRozan may not in Jordan’s class in terms of overall impact (although he’s doing his damnedest to get there right now), but in terms of style DeRozan is the closest thing we have left to an Heir Jordan.