DEROZAN SAYS MORE TO DO WITH RAPTORS
ALL-STAR GUARD BECOMES FREE AGENT NEXT MONTH, BUT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE HE’S LOOKING FOR NEW TEAM
After the biggest season in Toronto Rapt ors’ histor y, and before the biggest decision of his life, DeMar DeRozan sounded a lot like someone who had already made up his mind.
DeRozan, who will be an unrestricted free agent next month, started off his season-ending news conference saying the typical things about the uncertainty of a process he has never been through before, and that he hadn’t given his future much thought, especially during a whirlwind season that included a hometown All- Star Game, 56 wins, and a teamrecord 20 playoff games.
Then he mentioned his loyalty, and how much he values winning at this stage of his career. If you are inclined to draw inferences from such things, these points would be in favour of accepting great piles of money from the Raptors and not, say, the Los Angeles Lakers, who won 17 games last season and play in the gladiator arena that is the NBA’s Western Conference.
At this point, it seemed notable that DeRozan kept using the “we” pronoun when talking about the Raptors, then he brushed off the idea of returning to L.A. just to play in his hometown. When he was asked whether there was a potential better destination for him in the league than the situation he has in Toronto, DeRozan didn’t hedge his response.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “This ... just ... my mindset has always been Toronto. I always preached it. I was passionate about it when we was losing. When we was terrible, I said I’m going to stick through this whole thing and I want to be that guy who brings this organization to where it is now. I definitely don’t want to switch up after we win.”
At this point, if his agent had burst through the door and declared the news conference over, it would have been totally understandable.
But, he didn’t. The more DeRozan talked, the more it sounded like the only way he would leave would be if Raptors management didn’t try to keep him. He spoke about the bonds he has with the core group of players that have been here for several seasons. He talked about try- ing to build a legacy for the franchise in Toronto. And on that front, he said there was much business unfinished.
“I feel like I really haven’t done anything, to be honest,” DeRozan said. “I’m just telling you the God-honest truth, I really feel like I haven’t done anything. It’s still so much to be done. Still so much.”
None of these statements were the least bit binding, of course, but they were not the musings of someone with a foot out the door. If GM Masai Ujiri offers the expected maximum- value contract — something around $ 25 million a year — then DeRozan stays, especially since NBA rules allow Toronto to sign him to a bigger contract than could other teams.
Had t he Raptors suffered another early playoff exit, there might have been some doubt about Ujiri’s intentions in that regard. DeRozan, though he was the team’s leading scorer, at 23.5 points per game, and a two- time All- Star, plays an inefficient style in a league that has come to prize efficiency. He shoots a lot to get his points, and almost never from three- point range, and he’s a weak defender. At the low ebb of his playoffs, off a bad game against Indiana in the first round, DeRozan said he felt strongly that it was his job to keep shooting, even when they weren’t going in. He spoke with pride about “emptying the clip,” a sentiment that probably gave his coaches pause: sometimes the smart play is to pass, and there were more than enough moments in the post- season to see the limitations of DeRozan’s shoot-first game.
But the reality of Toronto’s situation is that upgrading from DeRozan — replacing a star with a superstar — is not something that would be easily accomplished. Would the team be better if it let him walk and gave those millions to Kevin Durant? Sure. Will that happen? No. The conference finals were a chance to see up close what championship contenders in the NBA tend to look like: they are built around megastars like Stephen Curry, or Durant and Russell Westbrook, or LeBron James. Toronto’s stars aren’t quite on that level, so they must go the route of the San Antonio Spurs, a team where the sum is always greater than the whole of its parts.
Coach Dwane Casey said that is the challenge ahead of this team. “It’s one of the hardest steps in sport that you can take, to go from a good team to an elite team, and that’s our goal,” Casey said.
It sounds l i ke DeMar DeRozan’s goal, too.