Toronto’s DeRozan Develops His One Dimension

The league’s craving for versatility has all but buried the classic basketball archetype of the one-dimensional scorer. Such players can still be found on struggling teams with few other options, but those with the luxury of choice shy away from shoot-first types with little else to offer.

For the most part, this is a positive development. Scoring is not the be-all even if it is, in the strictest sense, the end-all; though points on the scoreboard ultimately dictate the outcome of a game, how one goes about scoring matters a great deal, as do a player’s other contributions. In most cases, the push to make players more capable and well-rounded is constructive, even if it leaves certain limited prospects out in the cold.