DeRozan building second act
SAN ANTONIO — There was a release of frustration in the moment, but also a reminder served.
When DeMar DeRozan punctuated the Spurs’ frenzied fourth-quarter comeback with a vicious driving dunk over Minnesota’s Josh Okogie, it was the kind of slam that would have sent the AT&T Center into delirium in nonpandemic times.
Even so, the bone-jarring, rim-rattling force seemed to reverberate through the television set.
DeRozan just hoped the message made it north to Toronto, where until this week the 31-year-old held the Raptors’ single-game scoring record.
“I still got it,” a grinning DeRozan said after Wednesday’s 111-108 win over the Timberwolves. “When need be.”
DeRozan spent his first nine NBA seasons in Toronto, grew into a four-time All-Star there, and lifted the Raptors to 60-win heights they had not reached before his arrival.
Even as DeRozan plugs through his third season with the Spurs since a blockbuster July 2018 trade sent him south for Kawhi Leonard, the events of this week show he never can be completely disentangled from his Raptors roots.
The Toronto recall began Tuesday, when a fifthyear guard named Fred VanVleet erased DeRozan’s name from a line of the club record books.
Not quite out of nowhere, but kind of, VanVleet erupted for 54 points in the Raptors’ victory in Orlando.
That eclipsed DeRozan’s franchise mark of 52, and sent the Spurs guard scurrying to social media to offer congratulations — while not resisting a good-natured shot at his old friend Kyle Lowry.
“Kyle(’s) old ass couldn’t do it,” DeRozan tweeted at VanVleet. “Glad you did, champ.”
A day later, after his 16point fourth quarter helped the Spurs overcome a 16-point deficit against Minnesota, DeRozan was even more magnanimous about the fall of his Raptors record.
DeRozan was already an All-Star in 2016 when VanVleet arrived in Toronto as an undrafted rookie out of Wichita State.
“It’s amazing, man,” DeRozan said. “I have seen that kid go from being undrafted, to working his butt off to going to the D League, excited just to play in the D League, then come up to the (NBA) and do whatever was asked of him.
“For me, it’s beyond the relationship I have with him. It’s the appreciation I see in someone who really got it from the ground up.”
Perhaps VanVleet’s record-breaking night also served notice that DeRozan’s own Toronto days are fading further behind him.
The Raptors won a championship with Leonard the season after DeRozan was dealt. DeRozan is in his third season of playing Sherpa to a game-butrebuilding Spurs team not quite ready to summit the NBA mountaintop.
DeRozan did not ask to be in this situation with this team, though it should be noted he did accept a $27.7 million option in November to stay with the Spurs for at least one more season.
“DeMar’s been amazing since he’s been here,” guard Derrick White said. “He just comes to work and competes. He wants the best for everybody, not just him. That’s just the guy he is.
“I bet he was probably the same in Toronto.”
DeRozan’s competitive streak took over late Wednesday.
Instead of letting the Spurs lose to a Minnesota team toiling in the basement of the Western Conference, DeRozan dug deep and pulled them across the finish line for their biggest comeback victory of the season.
“He does an amazing job maneuvering his way around the paint, working with step-throughs, pump fakes, all different kinds of stuff,” said Spurs center Jakob Poeltl, who came with DeRozan from Toronto in the Leonard trade. “Even when you know he’s trying to get in the paint, he has so many different ways of doing it.”
That entire tool kit was on display in the fourth quarter Wednesday, as DeRozan reached 30 points for the third time this season.
He is averaging a teambest 20.1 points and careerbest 6.6 assists heading into Saturday’s game at Houston. With DeRozan catching fire in the fourth against the Timberwolves, it took the Spurs 6:05 to go from 16 points behind to the lead.
The motivation behind DeRozan’s VanVleet-esque fourth-quarter explosion was simple.
“Just didn’t want to lose, man,” DeRozan said. “The first three quarters were embarrassing, frustrating, in every sense of the word. We just wanted to win, man.”
The most important shot of DeRozan’s fourth quarter came with 2:28 to play, when he buried a baseline jumper while blanketed by Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards.
His electric dunk came four minutes earlier.
The Spurs’ rally was already in progress, with the Wolves’ 16-point lead trimmed to nine, when DeRozan came careening down the middle of the lane.
Okogie reached in for a steal, but at the last second seemed to rethink altogether the prospect of being posterized.
It was too late. DeRozan completed the dunk atop a ducking Okogie, who also picked up a foul for being slow to abandon ship. DeRozan’s old-fashioned 3point play brought the Spurs within six, and provided a signature moment of their game-turning 20-2 run.
“When he gets one of those power dunks, it kind of gets him going,” Poeltl said. “And we get an energy boost.”
For DeRozan, Wednesday’s highlight-reel jam boiled down to one thing.
“It was just me wanting to be aggressive, as aggressive as possible,” DeRozan said. “Just trying to get some kind of momentum going.”
DeRozan accomplished that mission Wednesday, and hoped his former team got his point. VanVleet might have his record, but DeRozan has still got “it.”