GIVING THEM A SHOT
DeRozan hopes clutch game-winner over Mavs proves to be turning point
SAN ANTONIO — What Dejounte Murray enjoyed most about those late night trips to an empty gym was the solitude.
The Spurs point guard was on his way back from a torn ACL injury in the spring of 2019. Once his recovering knee allowed, Murray would often make midnight treks to the team’s practice facility to get some shots up in private.
Every so often, Murray would arrive at the gym to the sound of balls already bouncing.
It turns out DeMar DeRozan liked the solitude, too.
“I used to run into him all the time,” Murray said, “seeing him on the side doing his thing.”
The shots DeRozan practiced the most during those solo sessions involved a dribble step-back jumper, the kind of desperation shot most useful when a clock is running down and the situation is most dire.
Sunday night, DeRozan publicly unfurled one of those shots in front of God, Dorian Finney-Smith and everyone else at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.
The result might have salvaged the Spurs’ road trip, if not their season.
DeRozan’s 20-footer over Finney-Smith with 0.5 seconds remaining not only lifted the Spurs to a 119-117 victory over the Mavericks. It also lifted a King Kong-sized money from the struggling Spurs’ backs.
“You need that first snowball to kind of go down a mountain to start an avalanche, in a good way,” DeRozan said. “We are hopeful a game like this versus a good team can kind of catapult us in the right direction.”
The Spurs (25-26) arrived in Dallas mired in a five-game losing streak, their longest of the season. Thanks mainly to DeRozan, they headed to Orlando on Monday with a chance at starting a winning streak.
After the Spurs dropped a two-point heartbreaker at Denver on Friday, DeRozan described the Spurs’ predicament as one only they could solve.
“We are not putting a Batman sign up in the sky, waiting on Bruce Wayne to come,” DeRozan said.
Instead, DeRozan decided to be his own Batman.
He scorched the Mavericks for 33 points, his eighth 30-point game of the season and second against Dallas.
DeRozan had 15 in the third quarter, keeping the Spurs in range against Luka Doncic and Co.
He saved his biggest bucket for last.
It is not hyperbole to suggest DeRozan’s final field goal of the game might have been the most important shot in his three seasons with the Spurs.
“I have always been a person who takes on adversity because it makes a man out of you,” DeRozan said.
Two nights earlier, DeRozan was one of three Spurs to miss a shot at forcing overtime in the final 10 seconds of a 121-119 loss at Denver.
With the way DeRozan had been rolling in Dallas, it was no surprise Spurs coach Gregg Popovich would put the ball in his hands with the game on the line.
“He’s got courage,” Popovich said. “He misses some of them and makes some of them, just like everybody through the ages. But he just comes back and does it again.”
The Spurs’ losing streak was still in the balance with 19.4 seconds remaining Sunday.
Doncic tied it at 117 on a floater in the paint. Overtime seemed a bad idea for a Spurs team that had already dropped a pair of OT games during its skid.
Everyone in the American Airlines Center seemed to know the game was going to be DeRozan’s to win.
In the Mavericks’ huddle, coach Rick Carlisle and his staff debated sending a double team DeRozan’s way, then opted to cover him straight up with Finney-Smith.
Carlisle would come to second-guess that decision within a matter of seconds.
“In hindsight we obviously should have gone with that (a double team),” Carlisle said. “That’s on me.”
It might not have mattered. The Spurs were intent on getting DeRozan the last look, come hell, high water or double team..
“Shoot, if they double, we want him to take it,” Murray said. “Kobe (Bryant) would have taken it with five guys on him. Take that (expletive).”
The ball went directly to DeRozan out of the timeout. He dribbled the clock almost all the way down, sized up Finney-Smith and worked his way to one of his favorite spots on the left wing.
At the last moment, DeRozan took a big step back and to his left, unfurling a textbook jumper over Finney-Smith’s outstretched arm.
When the ball found the bottom of the net, DeRozan unleashed a primal scream of pure catharsis.
“I was just trying to get to my spot, knowing the clock, taking my time, not rushing,” DeRozan said. “Just going to a move I have worked on so many times.”
If the move looked familiar to Murray, there was reason for that.
“I’ve seen it behind closed doors all the time,” Murray said.
This goes back to 201819, DeRozan’s first season with the Spurs.
The four-time All-Star had been traded from Toronto in the deal for Kawhi Leonard. Murray was expected to open the season as the Spurs’ starting point guard for the first time.
Not long after the trade, Murray put feelers around the league for reconnaissance on DeRozan.
One of Murray’s friends is veteran guard Lou Williams, who spent one season with the Raptors in 2014-15.
“‘Lou Will’ actually told me, ‘He’s a great person, you are going to love him from day one. He’s a hell of a worker and just a solid dude,’ ” Murray said. “DeMar has checked off every single thing on that list, as a person and as a basketball player, since I’ve been around him.”
Murray’s first season as a starter did not go as planned.
He tore up his knee in a preseason game in October of 2018 and spent the year rehabbing.
To cheer himself up — or at least feel some sense of normalcy — Murray would spend hours at a time at the Spurs’ practice facility, putting up shots alone.
Unless DeRozan was there.
The bond between Murray and DeRozan first sprouted during those late-night sessions.
Murray didn’t know it then, but he was watching DeRozan set the stage for the most consequential shot of his Spurs career.
“It’s crazy to see him finally hit one for us,” Murray said. “I’ve been waiting for that moment to see him do that. We believe in him, make or miss.”
With the clock nearing zero Sunday, DeRozan gave the Spurs one more reason to believe.