How a rookie snub forged DeMar DeRozan into one of the NBA’s elite

When Chris Bosh joined the list of stars to leave town, the Raptors franchise was turned upside down. But a bold declaration from DeRozan has propelled the franchise into one of the NBA’s best. Words by Michael Grange

When DeRozan was excluded from the rookie-sophomore game in his first NBA season, he took it personally and used it to fuel the fire that’s remained within him to become one of the NBA’s elite.

NEW ORLEANS – There are 24 all-stars gathered in New Orleans, ten of them starters, of which DeMar DeRozan is one.

And while none of them are what you would call an underdog in the classic sense of the term – no matter how hard a road an NBA player had to walk to reach the peak of the sport, they started with gifts that most mortals can only imagine – there may be no more unlikely member of the club than DeRozan, the long-serving Toronto Raptors star who is making his third all-star appearance, but will make his first as a starter on Sunday night.

Consider DeRozan’s first all-star weekend, way back in 2010 in Dallas. He participated in the slam dunk contest (losing to Nate Robinson in the final) but was conspicuously absent from what was then the rookie-sophomore game.

It was embarrassing.

As the ninth-overall pick in the 2009 draft and a regular starter for the Raptors who were pushing for a playoff berth in the final year of the Chris Bosh era, DeRozan would have seemed an obvious choice.

But he didn’t get the call. Two of the nine players on the rookie team that year – Dejuan Blair and Johnny Flynn – aren’t even in the NBA anymore. DeRozan is the only one besides James Harden and Stephen Curry to have made an all-star game since.

DeRozan still remembers the snub – he’s good at remembering snubs.

“That was step one of the whole process,” DeRozan said. “It sucked because all the guys you got drafted with, you see them playing and you have to go in and just do two dunks. … It gave me an edge that stuck with me from there. I carried everything else with me when I was overlooked or criticized about. It ate at me and it pushed me. It had a major part to where I’m at now.”

Where he is now, at age 27, is at his peak.

Not many NBA players have breakout seasons in their eighth year in the league. They might have their best season, but not like DeRozan is doing. Even after being plagued by an ankle injury and being weighed down by the Raptors’ struggles for much of the past few weeks, DeRozan arrives in New Orleans sixth in the NBA in scoring, at 27.3 per game, more than nine points above his career average prior to this year. He’s on pace for career marks in rebounds, assists and free-throws made, and doing it all more efficiently that he ever has before.

DeRozan’s game may not be to everyone’s taste – when he’s engaged he’s a decent defender but his commitment wavers and at crunch time he’s more likely to try and make a play for himself than his teammates, although he’s had his share of success doing it.

Regardless, this is the best basketball he’s ever played.

His peers recognize how hard it is to do what he does:

“DeMar works on his game, that’s what it comes down to,” says Kevin Durant, DeRozan’s USA Basketball teammate and a starter on the Western Conference all-stars. “I watch him man, his footwork in the post, it’s flawless. His mid-range game, that’s the kind of stuff I look at in a basketball player, his footwork, his mechanics, his handle. He was a dunker but he rarely dunks now … I’m a big fan, man.”

DeRozan has never lacked for confidence, but he’s only lately getting used to walking around at all-star weekend like he belongs – like he’s one of the very best in the game.

“I remember punching holes in the voting card – kids these days probably don’t know what that is. It’s crazy to think of it. It’s amazing,” he says. “My first all-star game I was nervous, I’m a kid and I’m around all these big names. My next one [in Toronto] and got the reception of being home and being [part of] a great team and this time around you’re just moving up that echelon of class of players. Without a doubt you feel a lot more comfortable when it’s your third, fourth, fifth, sixth time around.”

Would he have made it this far if his success had all come a little easier? A little sooner?

Probably, but those who know DeRozan well say that even from his earliest days in the NBA he had a plan to reach his potential, even if he didn’t know where that would take him.

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Eric Hughes is an assistant coach with the Milwaukee Bucks now but as a member of the Raptors staff early in DeRozan’s career his full-time job, it seemed, was working with a young kid from Compton who couldn’t shoot very well and couldn’t put the ball on the floor well enough to get to the rim or absorb contact when he got there. He’s not surprised that DeRozan is now walking amongst the league’s giants, but he knows it didn’t come easily.

“I knew those stories that other people didn’t know,” says Hughes. “I knew he had an inner flame burning to get to that next level.”

The Raptors would typically play at home on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons. On Saturdays Hughes and DeRozan would spend time at the Air Canada Centre, watching college games on the satellite dish in the players’ lounge, going upstairs to the practice gym to work on DeRozan’s game and then going back to the locker room to watch more basketball.

“We basically lived there,” said Hughes. “But he was a junkie and he loved it.”

Those early snubs stoked the furnace.

“His first year he didn’t make the rookie-sophomore game, right? And guys who don’t even play any more made that team, so that was a chip on his shoulder,” said Hughes. “He was like, ‘I got to get in that game, I got to be recognized as one of the 10 best sophomores, I have to play in that game … he always had a carrot to chase.”

DeRozan didn’t know where it would all take him. It’s what makes his famous tweet – “Don’t worry, I got us” – that he sent out after Bosh left the Raptors in the summer of 2010 even more remarkable, in retrospect.

He may have been making a pledge to hold things down in Bosh’s absence, he just wasn’t sure how it would happen.

“I never want to be average or an OK player or a player that sticks around,” he says. “I want to separate myself and put myself in a class that’s the elite of the league. That was always my dream and once I got into the league I wasn’t going to just be happy with whatever comes with it. I always wanted to separate myself and be hungry.

“As a young kid you don’t know exactly what you’re fighting for, but you’re fighting for something. I kept that mindset and as the road kept going things started getting more clear.”

It will be especially clear on Sunday night when DeRozan hears his named called as an Eastern Conference starter here in New Orleans.

Eight years after he wasn’t good enough to play at all-star weekend as a rookie, DeRozan is a veteran at the at the top of his game.

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