DeMar DeRozan’s NBA career has been a bit of a weird one until this point. He has been a 5-time All-Star and made it to 3 All-NBA teams, but there have also been many doubts about his ability to be the main star for a winning team. He was part of the trade that saw Kawhi Leonard go to the Toronto Raptors in 2018, and the fact that they immediately won a championship after that haunted him for a while.
DeRozan’s time with the Spurs was without much success, so when he became a free agent last season, he finally had the choice of which team to join. While this may seem like a boon, it seems that the uncertainty of the situation messed with DeMar. He spoke about it on an episode of the Draymond Green show, sharing his struggle from that time.
“And that summer come up, going into free agency. Like you said, it ain’t go as planned. That kind of brought so much doubt for me and put me in a dark place. I started to question, where am I going now? what player am I going to be? So many of these questions start to creep in. A lot of people don’t realize, big names always kinda sign in the first day or two.
I went into the first couple of days in free agency, with still such a question mark. I went into free agency with such a question mark. Was I going to go somewhere on a one-year deal? Was I going to take the minimum? It put me in a f**ked up place. Three, four days in a row I didn’t leave out the room. I didn’t see the sunset or the sun come up. I was in a depressed mindset because I didn’t know what the f**k was going to happen.
“Was I going to come to LA? That fell through, that didn’t happen. Was this? Was that? You seeing guys sign other places, and everybody hitting me up like, ‘What you gonna do? What you gonna do?’ And there were certain places I had no f**king clue what I was gonna do.”
It’s safe to say that DeRozan made the right choice by joining the Chicago Bulls. He found himself in MVP conversations at one point during the season and eventually got picked for the All-NBA Second Team. Speculation in the offseason is fun for a lot of fans and media members, but it’s interesting to hear the different ways in which impacts the players themselves, even stars like DeMar DeRozan.
