Scouting Doug McDermott — Is he actually good?

The Indiana Pacers went out and snapped up Doug McDermott early in free agency which leaves a lot of fans wondering: how good is he?

So, wow, a lot has happened in NBA free agency so far. You may have been a little angry about swapping Lance for Doug McDermott but I bet that anger has been replaced now, right?

Anyway, let’s roll it back and look at what the new guy might be able to bring to Indy.

McDermott shot an unbelievable 49% from three in his 26 games with the Dallas Mavericks, which when coupled with his performance in New York still gave him the best shooting year of his career to-date. His Effective Field Goal Percentage was also up significantly this past season, so this seems to be the main reasoning behind the signing of “McBuckets”, as he was affectionately known by at Creighton.

Kevin Pritchard and the Pacers wanted to add shooting off the bench to last season’s efforts and by moving on from Lance Stephenson (29% from three – sorry guys) and adding McDermott alongside the acquisition of Aaron Holiday and Tyreke Evans, we can certainly see shooting has become a priority in this off-season.

But where has McDermott been most effective in the last year?

Firstly, let’s start by saying this is not a signing for the starting five. Bojan Bogdanovic, who was recently guaranteed to stick around for the 2018/19 season will have nothing to worry about. McDermott has started just 13 of his 264 career games – Less than 5%.

Last season in overall offense in Dallas, per Synergy Sports, McDermott was ranked as ‘Excellent’ across the board. He did not fall below the top 15% of NBA players in any of Transition, Half-Court Offense, Short Shot Clock Situations, Out of Bounds or against man-to-man defense.

In transition with Dallas, Doug McDermott was actually one of the NBA’s elite scorers, jumping into the top 1%. These transition opportunities are based on him spending 86% of his time out on the wings. In New York, it was reasonably similar, McDermott spent the majority of his time out on the wings and was able to score at a consistent rate, only dropping in transition when he wasn’t able to take up his role outside.

As a spot-up shooter in Dallas, McDermott was in the top 15% in the league. In New York, he was in the top 20%. One reason for this increase with the Mavericks is that it seems McDermott was encouraged not to dribble the ball. At all. In Dallas on catch-and-shoot opportunities, McDermott was adding 1.357 points per possession, good for the 91^st percentile. McDermott would take almost 64% of his spot-ups on catch-and-shoot opportunities there and just under 8% off the dribble. Rick Carlise figured out how to use McDermott, and it worked great.

When driving to the basket, McDermott rarely ever drives left. Expect to see him go right every time, and if he surprises the defense it likely won’t matter. He scored eight points in 2017/18 when going left. It just isn’t in his game to switch up his direction.

This is a similar statistic when we look at McDermott’s off-screen numbers. But we have a huge difference in his numbers in Dallas to in New York. First, let’s start off with the bad.

In New York, it was bad – He was in the bottom 19% of players in the NBA on off-screen offense. This boils primarily down to taking too many possessions off the left side of the screener where McDermott fell to the bottom 5% in the league. On the right, he increased to the bottom 38%… Still not great.

In Dallas though, McDermott excelled. He went from bottom 19% in the NBA to top 17%. A huge jump! The Mavericks noted that he’s not good off of the left side, reducing his time going left by almost 11%, adding that all to the opposite side. The result, McDermott was still bad on the left. But on the right, the swingman was now responsible for 1.358 points per possession instead of 0.909 in New York – Good for the 93^rd percentile. Simply having him operate in areas he is comfortable made McDermott a much more serviceable player.

These three areas; Transition, Spot-Up, and Off-Screen are where you should expect to see McDermott utilized in the 2018/19 season. Everything else outside of these areas McDermott has done very infrequently throughout his career. When cutting, McDermott can provide some use, but he wasn’t used for this nearly as much post-trade.

As a side note, as you might expect, Doug McDermott does not turn the ball over much either as he isn’t someone who is handling the ball for long periods. For his career, he’s not had a single season where he’s averaged a full turnover per game. His career 8.1 turnover percentage is minuscule. He just does not lose the ball.

When looking into defense, on the Knicks McDermott was bad in short shot clock situations and on out-of-bounds plays. But as a man-to-man defender, he wasn’t all too bad. As a spot-up defender McDermott was one of the better players in the league at holding his man, keeping them to 0.85 points per possession. Where he fell hard was on the pick-and-roll when he was guarding the ball handler. Here, he was one of the worst defenders in the league during his tenure in the Big Apple.

In Dallas though, McDermott picked this up a little, improving by 25 percentile in points per possession conceded. This also seemed to up his efforts in all other defensive areas, too. On 169 defensive possessions, McDermott came into the top 1% of players on off-screen defense and top 5% on iso defense. His spot-up defending actually regressed in Dallas but overall as a defender he was able to improve from conceding 0.873 points per possession to 0.793. This doesn’t seem like a big jump at first but when you look at others players in the league it’s similar to exchanging D’Angelo Russell (0.873) for Tony Allen (0.794). That’s a solid difference.

Ultimately, the Pacers wanted to add bench scoring and shooting to a solid starting five and with Aaron Holiday and now Doug McDermott, we can see this starting to come to the fold. Lance Stephenson, although a fan favorite and energy-bringer to the team, was an offensive and defensive liability. He fell into the bottom quarter in total offense and bottom third in total defense. He shot 29% from three for the season and just 66% from the free throw line. The Pacers are paying approximately $3 million extra per year to bring in McDermott instead of Stephenson but you have to pay for offense and the shooting that he could provide off the bench could be invaluable.

If we look simply at Win Share Similarity Scores as a comparison, via Basketball-Reference, to try and justify value to the 3 years, $22 million deal, it comes out with McDermott’s closest current active comparison(s) being Maurice Harkless of Portland and his closest active career comparable being former Pacer, Solomon Hill.

Maurice Harkless is due to earn $10,837,079 in 2018/19.

Solomon Hill is due to earn $12,752,928 in 2018/19.

…and they’re not shooters. If we split Doug McDermott’s deal flat by the three years, he’s due to earn $7,333,333 in 2018/19.

Next: Turning over a new bigger and stronger T.J. Leaf

This could well be a huge value for money in the current market. It just depends, as with any player, what the Pacers can get out of their new acquisition – In Nate McMillan we trust.