August 27, 2018

[...] Take the Pacers, for example. They found $22 million over three years for the bench shooting of Doug McDermott, and gave Tyreke Evans $12.4 million for one year, yet needed only a third of that to get O'Quinn, a man not without his suitors. The one-year deals to both Evans and O'Quinn were deliberate - much like 2016, the summer of 2019 is shaping up to again be a free agency boon with more than half of the teams in the league having cap space, and players and agents are positioning themselves accordingly to capitalise. Only players getting at or above their perceived market value next summer chose to sign for more than one year, hence the outlier of the McDermott deal. Yet it is surely telling that Evans got nearly three times as much as O'Quinn. Evans is a very good player, but so is O'Quinn. One, however, has a more progressive, en vogue skill set. And can shoot. [...]

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June 29, 2018

Doug McDermott
SF - 6’8, 219lbs - 26 years old – 4 years of experience

With 92 made three-pointers on the season, all of them assisted, Doug McDermott has very much figured out who he is as this level.

All of those collegiate post touches, flip shots, they’ve all had it. McDermott is now an off-ball, off-down-screens shooter who will drive to the rim and finish unexplosively if left open, and occasionally take a step in for a mid-range two, at which he shoots badly under par. And that stuff is all secondary anyway. It’s threes for Doug.

The percentages on those threes are nice. But to be an elite shooter, McDermott will have to take more shots, tougher shots, and hit them more consistently. There is not much sign of that happening. McDermott is a quicker player in the NBA than he was at Creighton and mobile enough to get open off of curls, but sometimes he wants more than the slither of space that he opens up. For a shooter, he can be gun-shy.

Defensively, there’s still little good news. McDermott does not want the physical play or the rebounding grind, and so even though he can and does play as a small ball four option, he takes a lot off the table when he does so. For as sharp as the offensive instincts are, the defensive ones are just not there, and he does not have the physicality to make up for it.

That said, he is a role player who sticks to his task and does it well. There is a place in the NBA for that, and on the Mavericks.

Player Plan: Entering restricted free agency with a $4,510,847 QO that it would not be a bad idea if he took, but which might suit both parties better if it had a couple of future years (let’s say only the first one guaranteed) tied onto it. The Mavericks should look to re-sign McDermott, but re-signing a backup fairly one-dimensional player with no starting potential should not be a priority, so if things go well elsewhere and there’s no means to re-sign him any longer, so be it.

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June 29, 2017

Doug McDermott
SF, 6’8, 225lbs, 25 years old, 3 years of experience

By any measure, McDermott is a good shooter. But it seems he is not an especially confident one. Given that shooting is what he is in the game for - he is not a handler, a rebounder, much of a defender, or a post-up player at this level - he ought to at least cast them up. Especially on this Thunder team who needed this more than anyone. But McDermott’s volume of shots was low, and his inconsistency quite stark. His future in the league is as a shooter, and at this volume only, it’s not much of a future.

Player Plan: One year of rookie scale salary left. Extension eligible, but unlikely considering his limited output and limited upside. Let him play it out and prove himself, or not, then re-evaluate.

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