The organization clearly had a high opinion of McDermott coming into the league, and they continue to give that appearance when asked about his future with the team. However, when I think about what he'll be able to do with the current roster I'm not enthusiastic. Why? 1). He can't be on the floor together with Dunleavy for defensive reasons. He won't be on the floor in lieu of Jimmy Butler because he's a much better player. That limits the scope of his minutes. This is not true of Tony Snell who can probably be matched up with any other backcourt player due to his defensive abilities. 2). Contrary to popular opinion about him being "NBA ready", it looks to me like he has a very high learning curve to make it in the NBA. He can shoot, yes, but he's always been a very high usage player and it doesn't seem clear how he can play his game on an NBA team where he's not the first option and many of his moves in college don't translate. 3). He has a shorter timeframe than most NBA rookies. Gun to your head: if McDermott has a second season like his first will you have any confidence in him as an NBA player? I won't. Unathletic 4 year guys who don't have an ability to get their shot at the next level usually wash out very quickly. He's not Marquis Teague. I think there's a good chance his window of being a relevant player on the Bulls is effectively done if this year doesn't go well. 4). He has to compete with another young player at his same position. Snell and Doug are cannibalizing each other for development minutes, and I think there's a good chance the team will eventually have to pick one to develop and trade the other off, for the sake of the team and the player. Right now Snell does everything better than Doug at the NBA level, has better tools, and has one more year of experience. So how do we use Doug? The conventional wisdom seems to be that he'll be this great sidekick to Rose and Butler and will be able to thrive once defenses aren't focusing on him. I have my doubts this will be the case. Doug's been a high usage player his entire life. He brings little to the NBA table besides his scoring ability. If he's not doing that he provides very little. I think a lot of high usage guys get more effective the more shots they take. Think Kevin Love in Minnesota. He's clearly not talented enough to do this in a starting lineup. But I wonder, with the right lineup, if he could be this sort of guy coming off an NBA bench. He clearly wasn't that last year, but his numbers weren't actually too bad after his injury on a per-minute basis. I'm thinking his role with the team, if he has one, is a microwave/heat check guy off the bench. Otherwise he'll have a hard time fitting in.
We would've had a much stronger team if he could meet the hype he had coming in, but I must admit, I'm starting to doubt he'll ever come close to meeting it.
You raise a lot of interesting points in your post. I've been thinking about the above. Do you think you can say as a rule that it's never a good idea to ever have two developmental prospects at the same position? That is, when you have more than one rookie at the same position, is it true that they both almost always suffer? I'm trying to think of exceptions. If it is a rule, it explains why the baby bulls struggled like they did with so many rookies at point guard and along the front line. It would also explain why Sacramento seems chronically unable to develop its young talent.
Great post. Signing Dunleavy is a strange signal if one of the goals is to get McDermott more playing time. Out of Snell, Dunleavy and McDermott last season, Dougie was clearly the poorest player of the three. In fact, he looked pretty much inept out there. He can shoot (amazing in warmups) but his overall game just isn't there. I'm not willing to write him off until he gets some more playing time, but there may not be much playing time to be had given the guys ahead of him and this supposedly still isn't a team that can just dole out the development minutes. For being the NBA ready prospect, he was just a bust. One interesting change to the narrative. Last season, under Thibs, the story was that Thibs just can't develop rookies (except Omer/Taj/Mirotic) and he was the one keeping Doug down. Now that we have a coaching change, I'm reading more and more that Doug just might not be a very good NBA player, which, based on his play last season, seemed to be the case, at least last year. One would think that since Doug is a favorite of the org and they have an org controlled coach now that Doug would get development mintues. They didn't set up the roster for that to happen easily though.
Just stop. We don't and won't know anything like this about Hoiberg until well, well, into the season.
The main reason a coaching change was made was to get a guy in who would happily abide with management directives. Given that Paxson attacked Del Negro and the org ended up looking like a league wide laughing stock after the Thibs firing, its what they wanted. Gar got a guy from the college he likes and is tight with. Del Hoiberg needs the job and experience and will do as told.
One of the big unanswered questions about McDermott is whether he's a shooter or a scorer in the NBA. Ideally he's a scorer who uses elite shooting as one of his weapons, but we had very little chance to see him do this successfully last year. If he's a shooter it's easier to stick him into different lineups, but ultimately he's a less impactful player. I'm not sure Doug or the org knows the exact answer either.
I need to see him play minutes in real NBA games to really know. He looked very uncomfortable out there last year. Many blamed the coach for not getting him lots of minutes, but its tough to play a guy that is awful (PER of 6) meaningful minutes in a "win now" seasons when there are better players ahead of him many times in Snell and Dunleavy. Given that Snell and Dunleavy are still here, the problem doesn't appear to be fixed. I guess they just have to commit to playing him 10 a game at least, and if you lose regular season games, so be it. Tough thing to ask out of your rookie head coach though. Despite the popular viewpoint of the regular season doesn't matter, when the regular season losses start piling up, the regular season starts to matter, especially for the head coach. This is why its hard to do "win now" and "win later" at the same time. A team focused on winning the NBA title this season should not be worrying so much about this kind of thing. I doubt the Cavs are going to be stressed out about such matters next season, they are going to be trying to win the NBA title.
Highlights from Doug's last SL game: So far in SL he's been shooting threes at a low volume and doing a lot of shot creation from different spots on the floor. People are complaining about his 3P% but I think that's really off the mark. Doug can shoot. Everyone knows that. The big question is whether or not he can do his one-legged fadeaway/pull-up stuff outside of summer league. He did his work this game against Richard Hollis-Jefferson, who's a genuine NBA prospect with good length and defensive potential. That's encouraging. Of course I remember when he did the same thing last year against Shabazz Muhammed and I got all excited. I have a hard time seeing Doug doing his non 3P scoring 1v1 in the NBA, and thus he needs a system to play in for him to get his shots. In that regard he actually reminds me of Boozer......offensively dangerous because of his arsenal, but a guy who needs a lot of stuff set up for him in order to do it. This means he might be offensively prolific, but ultimately a guy that can always be shut down with good defense, and might be relegated to a more traditional spot-up shooter role in the playoffs. For now I'm still leaning towards giving him a crack at being a high usage bench scorer during the regular season.
I think this is basically where everyone's at right now. We'll have to see how he actually does in the games. My impression is there's going to be a greater commitment to getting guys more regular minutes in the season, and I expect to Snell and Doug to see court time, even if they have a bad stretch of games. Hopefully this will give us enough of a window to determine how Doug's game fits on the Bulls. On a side note, I wouldn't be surprised if it takes Doug 5+ years to fully grow into his game. Thinking about guys like Korver and JJ Reddick......I think being unathletic gives you a learning curve similar to a big guy. It genuinely takes you a long time to figure out how you can use your body, which is a reason they tend to peak late.
He definitely has shown a knack for scoring in the NCAA and in the NBA Summer League. We all know those don't really matter that much though,right? That midrange and paint stuff in real NBA action? I'm not so sure. We'll see. Boozer was an actual power forward that could collect rebounds in real NBA games at a fairly high rate. That isn't Doug, at least not the one I'm seeing. That being said, I have not seem him play very often in real NBA games and when he did he put up a PER of 6. If the Bulls are not title contenders anymore, they just need to give him development minutes and see what they have. Strange move resigning Dunleavy if that's the case. Really good NBA players get systems designed around them. McDermott hasn't shown himself worthy of such treatment, but I hope that we see a more productive Dougie this season.
Could be. A true "win later" pickup. Going to be tough to figure out what kind of contract to offer him after the rookie deal if that's the case. Strange there was so much vitriol about getting him off his rookie year if that is the case though, especially during one of the rare seasons the Bulls were title contenders. Also, the sales pitch on this guy is that he was "NBA Ready." Its kind of a downer that he's now a 5+ years out guy, potentially. He certainly wasn't a rookie sensation. How many guys have had a PER of 8 or lower in their rookie year and went on to be all-stars?
The comparison wasn't based on their position. I think Doug's a SF who might be able to occasionally post up 2's or take bigs out past the 3PT line. But I think 90%+ of his minutes will come at the SF position. The point was that they're both skilled and prolific on offense (hypothetically in Doug's case), but not quite physically talented enough to do it without the benefit of offensive flow. Good point and I agree. That's the big question. Are Doug's abilities potent enough at the NBA level to justify the amount of accommodation his game will need? We'll find out soon enough. Let the regular season begin!
Assuming Rose and Butler are productive mainstays on the roster, I'd be more than happy with in-his-prime Boozer level production from my third or fourth option.
Yes, that makes sense. The question with Doug is of course "who will he guard?" and can those moves work in NBA games? That was a nice video you posted so thanks for that, and, yes, many of those crafty moves in the lane and mid range shots look a lot like Boozer. Doug will likely have to guard the 3 though while Boozer was a passable 4 and could do power forward things. That position is changing in the modern NBA so who knows. When I watch those summer league highlights I find myself thinking the same things when I watched his NCAA highlights.... OK.... but I don't usually see guys pull that kind of thing off in the NBA at his height / athleticism level. Also, its going to be tough to make a guy like him the focus when he's playing with Rose, Butler and Gasol. Like you said, a bench guy this season perhaps when paired with the other bench mob guys. If Snell can become a more consistent 3 point shooter though, given that he can guard 3s, I can't help but think that he might be the better prospect, but McDermott is such an unknown at this point its hard to say. He has nowhere to go but up at this point and I imagine that the org (and therefore the coach) will be on board with getting him minutes, if that's what they want to do. His evolution will be interesting to watch, as I honestly don't feel at all confident predicting what he'll end up being. Our "win later" core right now is Butler, McDermott, Portis and Mirotic right now so I'm sure there is PT for Doug in that group.
Taking a long time to hit your peak is not the same thing as being a bad player right off the bat (of course it doesn't exclude it either). Korver just his his peak but he's been a good player ever since coming into the league. (FYI, my point is not that Doug's as good as Korver when he came into the league. I know that. Just stating that "long time to hit peak !== bad player before then"). I doubt that's the case. Taking a long time to hit your peak does not mean your game has a lot of potential variance.
Interesting. As to the original post: 1) I don't think you can write off Doug McDermott if he has a bad season. One of the most common mistakes everyone (fans, media, GMs) seem to make is that we expect player career trajectories to follow a neat and pretty arc. We want order and steady growth and then decline, but that just doesn't seem to be how things go. A year ago, Jimmy Butler was a 12M dollar per year player who looked like he was never going to be much better than replacement level. Doug McDermott is no Jimmy Butler, but I think we can find other examples of shooters who took a little while to get their footing. One of the things these guys had in common too was that while they shot poorly from the field early in their careers their three point shooting was always pretty good. It makes me like that stat you posted about McDermott's three point shooting after February 1. That being said . . . 2) I agree with everyone that Doug McDermott has been abysmal in summer league. He's been moderately effective attacking the rim but his finishing has been awful. He doesn't go up strong at the hoop or use a floater, and none of his vocabulary is going to work in the regular season. Hell, he's had his shot blocked in summer league way more often than any lottery pick should. He still can't shoot coming around a screen without throwing himself off balance, and his hokey one-on-one stuff isn't going to translate. That step-back jumper kills me most of all. I don't remember him hitting one of those during the regular season out of his many, many attempts. On the other side of the ball, he's going to get regularly embarrassed on defense -- highlight reel embarrassed -- if he guards players like he is now. He runs himself out of position way too often, and even summer league prospects seem to be able to score against him at will. His shooting is ice cold from behind the line, which isn't the end of the world given the small sample size but it doesn't instil confidence either. It's just bad. 3) K4E, my criticisms of Thibodeau were more focused than "he just didn't develop McDermott." I thought asking McDermott to execute Ray Allen sets, running off screens all over the court, was too far outside of his comfort zone as a rookie. I thought McDermott could have contributed if Thibs worked him into the rotations in situations where he could succeed; that is, playing more like Dunleavy. But here's the thing, Dunleavy can handle, and finish at the hoop and bang a little down low. Maybe Thibs was onto something when he curtailed McDermott's activities to shooting off screens. As hard as it is to learn how to shoot after running full tilt off a big, maybe it's harder to learn how to dribble. For what it's worth, Gar Forman in his interview during the Minnesota game said that McDermottt was capable of much wider variety of vocabulary than he showed last season, which I took to be as specific a dig at Thibs as we've heard. All the personal weirdness aside, Forman has shown an eagle eye in certain situations. This is the same guy that announced on draft day in 2011 that the power forward that he had selected at the very bottom of the first round would be one of the best wing defenders in the NBA, and he was right. Here's hoping he's right again. 4) I think you could play Dunleavy and McDermott together if you slotted Dunleavy at the four. Which is to say, I find McDermott's chatter about being a stretch four to be really disconcerting. In my mind, he's fourth on the depth chart of stretch fours behind Mirotic, Portis and Dunleavy. I don't think he can play the position and I don't think the Bulls need him to play the position. It almost feels to me like he's fighting to keep the dream of being able to do what he did in college in the pros alive instead of facing the hard fact that he's going to have to substantially rework his game. That attitude is not going to help anything. He can't board like a stretch four, hold his own in the paint or dream about guarding the rim. I'm not a fan of the idea at all. It feels like a distraction. 5) As you probably tell, I'm not doing a particularly good job of keeping summer league play in perspective like I know you have to. Right now, all I see from McDermott is disappointment for this upcoming year.
