Dinos & Digits: DeMar DeRozan is scoring in bunches

Welcome back to another season of Dinos & Digits, a column where we dive into the box scores and find five interesting or strange Raptors statistics and put them on front street for discussion.

There will be a mix of both individual player and team statistics to explore, ranging from raw box score numbers to some interesting and funky advanced metrics.

We’re only a little over a week into the new season, so our digits all get the “small sample size” caveat for now. Either way, the Raptors look good at 3-1 and some interesting trends are emerging.

OK, let's get down to it. Here are this week's interesting digits:

DeMar DeRozan is averaging 36.3 points per game.

Scoring average isn’t a very deep stat to dive into, but DeMar’s impressive start to the season in that area is certainly worth highlighting, especially considering the fact that he’s leading the league in it. He can’t possibly keep things going quite at this Jordan-esque height (the career 44.4% shooter isn’t going to shoot 55.4% forever), but it’s still nice to see this kind of production coming after his signing a new, lucrative deal.

The team’s record for scoring average in a single season is 27.6, set by Vince Carter in 2000-01. Does DeRozan have a shot at setting a new franchise best this season? It’s certainly in play if the first four games are any indication.

Jonas Valanciunas is averaging 16.0 points and 11.0 rebounds per game.

Is the JV breakout finally happening? Through four games, he’s averaging a double-double in a healthy 31.8 minutes per contest, so it’s starting to look entirely possible.

If that jump in minutes sticks (a 5.8-minute increase over last year’s 26.0 per game), averaging a double-double on the season will definitely be a possibility for the big guy. That feat has only been accomplished three times in team history: Antonio Davis in 2000-01 (13.7 and 10.1) and Chris Bosh in both 2008-09 (22.7 and 10.0) and 2009-10 (24.0 and 10.8).

The Raptors are dead last in the league in assist percentage at 41.3%.

Same story, different season.

They’re aware though:

The lineup of Kyle Lowry, DeMar DeRozan, DeMarre Carroll, Patrick Patterson, and Jonas Valanciunas has a net rating of 10.1 in 34 minutes of action.

The version of this lineup with Pascal Siakam in place of Patrick Patterson (also known as the starting lineup through four games), by contrast, is at -5.4 in 55 minutes.

The Raptors have a three-point attempt rate (percentage of field goal attempts that are threes) of 22.0%.

That is the third-lowest mark in the Association. Last year, the Raps were 15th in the league in three-point attempt rate at 28.7%.

All stats courtesy of basketball-reference.com and NBA.com/stats.