April 27, 2010
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J.—After a promising start to his sophomore season, when he averaged 16.4 points and 4.5 boards on .460 shooting through December, Chris Douglas-Roberts found himself scuffling to figure out his role. Yet it’s best to remember that from one level to the next, CDR has defied the doubters.
This feature, since updated, was originally published in the Winter 2010 edition of the Nets All-Access Quarterly magazine.
As great friendships sometimes do, this one started with a misunderstanding. Having just completed a difficult rookie season with the Nets, Chris Douglas-Roberts could’ve taken it negatively when the team used the following year’s first-round pick, No. 11 overall, on Louisville swingman Terrence Williams. Especially considering the Nets’ same-day acquisition of second-year shooting guard Courtney Lee.
Now faced with future-focused competition at both shooting guard and small forward, Douglas-Roberts opted instead for a welcoming vibe, via Twitter: “Like TWill. He's an all around guy. Very versatile. Like a 2-3.” Williams caught the message, but remained dubious about the account’s veracity, tersely responding, “thanks bro.”
Miffed by the thought that Williams was short with him, Douglas-Roberts proved stubborn upon meeting the rookie in Las Vegas at the 2009 NBA Summer League. Williams, noticing the shutout, asked about the Twitter account, discovering its validity only then. He admits now that had he known, he would’ve responded with all 140 characters Twitter allows.
Once the clarification was made, the bonding began.
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“I couldn’t tell you how it started,” Williams says. “Real people recognize real.”
At 22 years old, having completed his sophomore season at basketball’s highest level, Douglas-Roberts has long been overcoming skepticism with outstanding results, though most often it’s centered on whether his herky-jerky offensive game will translate to another talent plateau. There is a pattern here: he succeeds, that success is questioned, he is downgraded, he adjusts and succeeds anew.
Coming out of Northwestern High School in Detroit (graduating in 2005, he attended Cass Technical HS for all but senior year), Douglas-Roberts was a beanpole, standing 6-foot-5 and 165 pounds.
Projected as a combo guard, most rankings placed him in the middle of his class’ top 100, with the Detroit News leaving him outside the top 10 players in Michigan as a junior, according to a March 2008 article in the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Yet Douglas-Roberts drew attention from schools like Arizona, Georgia Tech and Kansas before choosing to play for John Calipari at Memphis.
Modest averages of 8.5 points and 3.4 rebounds in 34 games (25 starts) earned Douglas-Roberts Conference-USA All-Freshman honors, and by junior year he had blossomed into the leading scorer on a NCAA National Runner-Up, averaging 18.5 PPG on .541 shooting while increasing his three-point accuracy to .413 from a freshman mark of .310. Yet that season ended with a heartbreaking loss in the NCAA Final, as Kansas overcame a nine-point lead in the game’s final two minutes – aided greatly by Douglas-Roberts missing three free-throws and a jumper – before winning in overtime.
“Ever since the National Championship, when I missed those three free throws, I watched that tape and saw why I missed: I was kind of fading back on my free throws instead of staying with them,” Douglas-Roberts says. “That’s why I missed those in the national title game. After that game, I just really focused on shooting free throws.”
This season, Douglas-Roberts shot 133-of-157 (.847) from the line – well above the .729 he compiled in three years at Memphis. That number contributed heavily to the early-season scoring increase that left him among the team leaders in PPG. But we’re ahead of ourselves, having skipped the doubt that inevitably preceded this stretch of NBA success.
Earning All-America honors as a junior, Douglas-Roberts declared for the 2008 NBA Draft, expecting to be selected somewhere in the second half of the first-round and earning a guaranteed three-year deal. Name after name was called, but none were nearly as long (the 14 letters in “Douglas-Roberts” arch across his jersey like a St. Louis landmark). General managers apparently couldn’t be convinced that the numbers would be reproduced against the rangy athleticism of NBA defenders. It was only at the 10th pick of the second round (No. 40 overall), when the Nets found themselves able to choose a player they had furiously attempted to trade up and acquire, that Douglas-Roberts had realized his NBA dreams.
Able to negotiate a three-year guaranteed deal, Douglas-Roberts spent the summer readying himself, turning in a solid performance (14.0 PPG, 3.8 RPG, 1.8 SPG) at the Orlando Pro Summer League. But he missed a month after spraining his MCL in the third game of the regular season, which severely hampered any progress made during training camp, and it wasn’t until mid-March that Douglas-Roberts regained a rotation spot. He then kept it by averaging 9.5 PPG in 22.2 minutes during the season’s final 15 games.
Humbled by the struggle, Douglas-Roberts dedicated himself to the gym throughout the summer, working mainly with trainer Jerry Powell of Basketball Results (Long Island, N.Y.) The signs were there in summer league, which he opened with back-to-back 20-point games, and then in training camp, where Douglas-Roberts emerged as the team’s starting small forward despite wide-spread predictions he’d be the sixth man.
A quarter of the way through the season, Douglas-Roberts was undeniably the team’s breakout player. Demonstrative like few others, he became a media spokesman during the team’s record-setting, 18-game, season-opening losing streak, wending the paths of frustration as he dealt with the longest sustained stretch of team failures he’d ever encountered.
That culminated during the third quarter of the team’s 18th loss, a 117-101 defeat by the Dallas Mavericks. Douglas-Roberts committed a turnover, creating a 2-on-1 fast break with Shawn Marion and Jason Kidd racing to score on Douglas-Roberts, who expected help and committed while attempting to break up the play. But help never arrived, Kidd dropped in a layup, and Douglas-Roberts angrily called a timeout – a rare occurrence, as point guard Devin Harris claims he’d never seen a player do that before.
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“We were going the wrong way,” Douglas-Roberts explains. “We weren’t going the right way. I saw our body language wasn’t the best , and that play made me see it. That play really made me see it. I just wanted to let people know, let us know – the guys on the team – that we have to be better than that.”
Interim head coach Kiki Vandeweghe acknowledges that Douglas-Roberts’ calls for toughness and heart haven’t gone unheard. “Anybody with that much passion, I’m fine with,” Vandeweghe says. “That you can work with.”
Williams says Douglas-Roberts wields an astute basketball mind, pointing out that he’ll adjust on the fly during 1-on-1 sessions, leaving a defender unable to guard him the same way twice.
That will benefit Douglas-Roberts going forward, because as he proves his productivity is sustainable, teams will begin shifting strategies to better contain him. Harris says this back-and-forth occurs in cycles of approximately 10 games, which he’s familiar with after having progressed from fourth option to All-Star since being traded to the Nets two seasons ago.
But for all the attention paid to Douglas-Roberts’ now-established offensive game, filled with floaters and baseline dribble-drives, his defense has proved solid – even impressive in some instances. A lanky 6-foot-7, he’s disruptive in passing lanes (1.1 steals per game in 38 as a starter) and every few games seemed to swat some unsuspecting soul on the fast break, sending a soft layup ricocheting forcefully at an unexpected angle.
He notably accepted the challenge of guarding Carmelo Anthony in the team’s games against Denver, difficult as it can be to contain one of the league’s leading scorers. And according to the Web site 82games.com, while playing either small forward or shooting guard (statistically most of his PT, though he sometimes mans the point or the 4 for short stretches), Douglas-Roberts holds opponents close to league-average production (a player efficiency rating of 15).
“I can’t really tell you where I’m going to end up, but I feel like I’ve pretty much proven myself thus far,” Douglas-Roberts says. “And I don’t feel like it’s going to stop. I feel like I’m going to continue to get better every year, so we’ll see. We’ll see.”
One would be wise to heed his words – Chris Douglas-Roberts has been doubted before. And we know how that story ends.
