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James Ham: Scott Perry is trying to send out players and salary. He's trying to improve the team while making these adjustments, which is its own tall task, and there's a possibility that Sabonis and DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine and Malik Monk are all gone before the dust settles, right? Before we get through all of free agency, or before we get to full-fledged Summer League, or we get to the end of July. All of those players could be gone.
Richard Jefferson: Start, bench, cut. LA basketball royalty. Kobe Bryant, Magic Johnson, LeBron James. DeMar DeRozan: LA Lakers basketball? Jefferson: Yeah, LA. Yeah. DeRozan: Start Magic, bench Kobe, cut LeBron. Jefferson: Yeah, that's fair. LeBron's been here for like 12 years. We don't need to make it a thing.
“Who in the league do you think takes the most disrespect to their legacy right now?” DeMar DeRozan: “I feel like anybody who has any type of success, as soon as you fail and don’t win a championship or something, it’s so easy to discredit players these days because everybody is so opinionated. I remember growing up, the only time you heard something about a player was when you picked up the paper the next day. You know what I mean? Nowadays, you got people on Twitter thinking they’re journalists, people on TV getting in front of a mic. It’s so easy for them to just say, ‘Oh, they can’t get past the first round, second round, this and this.’ And it’s like, it’s hard to win a championship. So much has to go perfect. But who are you to just sit up here and discredit a player? So for me, I feel like it’s somebody every single year. It’s hard to just point at one individual. There’s somebody every year. These dudes put everything they had in to try to get to this point. You know what I mean?”
DeMar DeRozan: I think I didn’t realize it when I got to San Antonio. My mind was always like, ‘I got to shoot it thirty, thirty-five times. I’m getting after it.’ You know what I mean? That was always my mindset. When I got with Pop, Pop taught me how to use my teammates to make it easier for me later in the game. Utilizing them, playing a certain type of way, breaking down the game, understanding the game, sharing the ball — that opened up the game for me super easy. You know what I mean? And he tricked me. It was a crazy thing. He tricked me. I remember my first shootaround when I got to San Antonio. We were going through walkthrough. Pop told everybody I’m the point guard. I had never played point guard in my life. But it put me in a position of like, ‘Man, I got to get everybody else going.’ You know? And it opened up a different type of vision that I didn’t know I had. So, it made me a playmaker first. And fourth quarter, he’d always say, ‘Do what you need to do. Go win the game.’”
Can we ask a similar question about DeRozan? Obviously, they have not had the same career, but he is still one of the best players of all time, without any doubt. They do not have the same personality at all. Maxime Raynaud: Yeah, they really have nothing to do with each other. And the funny thing is, they are best friends. Interviewer: They are very close. Maxime Raynaud: I think they come from around the same district, or something like that. But DeMar is the opposite. He is not going to say a word. With him, it is all through actions. And it was funny because in preseason, during the first three or four preseason games, I had not understood that for veterans, it was just a way to run a little, get back in shape, and warm up. I think he had taken, really, maybe six or seven shots over four games. I was like, “Okay, year 17, he is a little tired,” and all that. Then the next day — or two days later — we played our first game of the season, and I think he finished with 28 or 30, something like that. I turned to Zach and said, “Wait, he is actually hot, then.”
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Michael Scotto: Julius Randle on Ayo Dosunmu: “I didn't know he was that damn good. I ain't gonna lie to you. When I was in the East and he was in Chicago, that were those DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine teams, so I don’t know if the opportunity was there as much, but damn, I'm glad we got him.”
Scott Perry: Did the year go the way any of us wanted it to go in terms of wins and losses? Of course not. But I don’t think you can ignore the amount of time missed by such key players. When you add Hunter in there after the deadline, those are four of your top six scorers on your roster. And so, that’s difficult to make up for. But in terms of their mindset, their approach, and their attitude, that was the one thing. As a matter of fact, DeMar DeRozan made that comment to me during his exit meeting, just saying through all the difficulty — some of the losses and things this year — the group never broke. They stayed together. And you could kind of see that. Again, I think that was a testament to Doug and his ability to have the same energy coming the next day to practice, regardless of what had transpired the night before.”
For DeRozan, the priority remains simple even as he enters the final year of his three-year, $73 million deal. “Most important part is still being able to play basketball,” he said. “To play the game that you love.” He also praised the chance to share the floor with Russell Westbrook, calling him “basically family.” DeRozan said, “It’s amazing to be able to sit next to somebody where you know exactly where he come from and to see how much we accomplish.”
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Obviously, you’ve been here a couple years, but seeing that type of love from the fans and that type of love from the organization, what does that mean to you at this point? DeMar DeRozan: I’m always appreciative of being honored in any type of way. It’s always a cool thing. That’s why I always make it a point to try to be available, go out there, and play — not just for myself, but for the fans and for the organization — because I always feel like I owe that to them. So, tonight was definitely a cool thing, whatever you want to call it, night. It was definitely cool.
DeMar DeRozan: Like I said, we only get so long to play this game. And if people on the outside really understood the sacrifices that us as athletes put into this game, they’d understand. I know for me personally, a lot of stuff I’ve been through in my life, I never try to let that be a distraction when it comes to the workplace. I try to always give my all to it. But it’s a lot of lonely days, a lot of frustration that goes into it. A lot of times, we sacrifice being away from family, dealing with personal things, and still try to come out and compete, be available. So, to me, it’s always deeper than just what people can look at on the stat sheet. For me, I never take any type of game moment for granted. That’s why I play so much and try to be available no matter what, because I don’t take any game moment for granted. This — excuse my language — but I may not come to California playing basketball again. I’ve been doing this for 17 years, man. It’s beyond a blessing.
