Pulse Check: DeMar DeRozan

DeRozan is doing what he does every year: scoring with efficiency, canning midrangers, and faking younger players out of their Christmas-colored shoes. The Kings are better with him on the floor, particularly on offense, where they sport the league’s seventh-ranked rating.

At 13-13, though, the Kings rank as a mild disappointment. This is more or less precisely what critics of the DeRozan trade feared would happen. Sacramento went from one of the three-point-happiest teams in the league to one of the saddest. The defense is worse with DeRozan on the floor, and directly or not, his presence seems to be negatively impacting promising youngster Keegan Murray.

The Kings haven’t been bad, exactly. They’ve just felt like a team with a very low ceiling, which is exactly the opposite of what they hoped for when trading for DeRozan. It’s hard to say he’s the culprit given the Kings’ meh-ness last season, too, but at the least, he hasn’t been a needle-budger.