Carroll: Why I play each game like it’s my last

DeMarre-Carroll;-Toronto-Raptors;-Atlanta-Hawks;-NBA

DeMarre Carroll spent the last two NBA seasons with the Atlanta Hawks. (David Goldman/AP)

If you’ve heard DeMarre Carroll speak since he decided to bring his talents north of the border, surely you’ve recognized the similar narratives and phrases that arise.

“Blue-collar, grit n’ grind,” is how he describes his demeanor and playing style; “I bring energy every night”, he says, in his Southern drawl, of how he plans to impact his teammates, insisting if a teammate is down he’ll be the one to pick them up.

And, of course, the story of his improbable rise from forgotten bench player to the prodigious title of “Sixty Million Dollar Man”-the five teams in five years, riding the pine, toggled between positions and nearly run out of the NBA altogether before seizing an opportunity with the Atlanta Hawks, for whom he started 142 games over the past two seasons.

And it’s all true, though it barely begins to scratch the surface of what Carroll brings to the Raptors.

‘Tough’ is probably the word probably most often associated with the 29 year-old Alabama native, who took center stage at the Air Canada Centre this morning at a press conference to officially announce his addition to the Toronto Raptors roster. And you’d have to be tough as hell to overcome what Carroll has to get to where he is today.

“My older brother, Delonte, passed from a brain tumour when I was young,” says Carroll, who was just five at the time. Delonte was nine years old, and was his little brothers’ basketball idol.

“He really meant a lot to me and always wanted to play the game of basketball at a high level,” says Carroll. “He’s the one who first showed me how to play the game. So every time I check into a game, I draw a heart on the court and blow a kiss to him- just to let him know that I’m not the only one going into this game. He’s going in there with me. It’s something I’ve been doing ever since he passed.”

And it’s played a crucial part in his approach, in crafting that ‘grit n’ grind’ approach to his craft he’s so often talked about.

“That’s why every time I go into a game,” Carroll says of what Delonte has taught him in the years since his passing, “I play like it’s my last. I don’t take anything for granted. Because, as I learned, your life can be taken from you any day. “

Carroll himself has had a couple of reminders more recently. While at Missouri, Carroll was shot at a nightclub on the fourth of July, 2006. He showed up to pick up a teammate (Carroll maintains you won’t find him in the clubs popping bottles, one of a number of ways to distinguish him from the last marquee Raptors free agent signing), and was caught in the line of fire when he tried to break up a fight. The bullet ripped through his ankle and missed his Achilles tendon by millimeters.

Two years later, he began to feel an ongoing itchiness in his legs, so bad that the scratching left his skin peeling off and dripping blood. A test revealed Carroll had a rare liver disease, something he lives with on a daily basis. He says it’s still possible that he’ll need a liver transplant at some point in his life, though likely not for another twenty years.

He thought his basketball career was over, but managed to come back strong for his senior season, earning all-conference honours with the Mizzou and parlaying it into a first-round selection by the Memphis Grizzlies, who promptly parked him on the bench, where he more or less stayed for two years.

Often discouraged but never deterred, Carroll says it was a pick up basketball game in Reseda, California at the 360 Health Club in the summer of 2011 that changed everything.

“That was when I took that jump,” says Carroll. “That’s when I realized that I could play at a high level, because I was in there playing with guys like Paul Pierce- back when he was still Paul Pierce– Kevin Garnett, Paul George, Tyson Chandler, Elton Brand, the list goes on. Paul Pierce and KG was like ‘We’re going to go back and talk to Danny Ainge about bringing you to Boston because we really need that toughness on our team.’

It never happened, but he took that experienced and built on it, eventually turning heads with the Utah Jazz, prompting the Atlanta Hawks to sign him before the 2013-14 season, where he became a key cog in what was the best team in the conference last season.

He even coached the Hawks’ Summer League team, something he says helped him gain new perspective on how to be a leader among teammates. “Hopefully for [the Raptors] I can be a coach on the floor.”

Which brings us to today.

At his press conference this morning, Carroll stressed that he brings a defensive identity to the Raptors, something solely lacking throughout a rocky 2014-15 campaign for the club. He added that he’ll get his offense “where he fits in”.

But he’s already spoken in person with Casey, who wants a bigger offensive role for his new forward than what Carroll had in Atlanta, where he averaged 12 points in the regular season and 17 in the playoffs.

And while, yes, defense will always be a priority, Carroll, who was a guest on this week’s Free Association (Sportsnet’s weekly Raptors & NBA podcast), says he plans to continue his quest to be, as he put it, “the African-American Kyle Korver.”

“I want to be automatic,” Carroll says, “to shoot the ball more consistently, up in that 40% range.”

As much as the Carroll signing helps address a number of needs for the Raptors on the court—spacing, shooting, defense, ball-movement, integrity—the fit between player and organization seems ideal, too.

Carroll, like the rest of the basketball world, took notice when Masai Ujiri famously told a throng of Raptors fans “F*** Brooklyn!” and followed it up with “We don’t give a s*** about ‘It’” this past spring. And it’s the kind of message that spoke to him.

“That’s your general manager going to bat for you, knowing he’s in the battle along with you and showing he’s as competitive as you,” Carroll says. “That gives you a lot of motivation, self-esteem to go out there and try to perform on the court.”

As for his new coach, Dwane Casey, it’s a match made in heaven, and Casey hasn’t held back, decreeing his “man-crush” on his newest player. Consider the feeling mutual.

“I really fell in love with [Casey] when he walked into my house,” Carroll says of the recruiting visit at the start of free agency July 1st. “I always knew he was a hardcore guy, defensive-minded, nitty-gritty type of coach. Listening to him talk, it made me feel like I was going to play for my uncle.”

Carroll’s uncle, Mike Anderson coached him at Arkansas for two years, and then Carroll followed him when Anderson took the head coaching job at Missouri for his final two college seasons.

You can read it into what Carroll told me in our interview, and what he echoed in his press conference this morning, and dismiss it as typical AthleteSpeak.

But to know the person and his story is to know, quite simply, that it’s not. In Carroll the Raptors got not just a capable basketball player, but a genuine person who worked hard for what came to him. Character matters. Just as much as talent. When you find someone with both, they’re worth investing in.

So what now, DeMarre? “It’s time to go work.”

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