DeMar DeRozan chose Bulls with Clippers en route to meet, wouldn't have returned to Raptors without Kyle Lowry

 

DeMar DeRozan recently sat down with his former teammate Serge Ibaka to eat chicken hearts. It was DeRozan's second appearance on Ibaka's cooking show, "How Hungry Are You?"

Before the chicken hearts were on the table, the two of them discussed the day that DeRozan decided to join the Chicago Bulls last summer. It began with Ibaka saying that he'd heard his Los Angeles Clippers had a contingent headed to DeRozan's house when they found out the Bulls deal was done.

"What happened, bro?" Ibaka said. "Wait, wait, before you answer the question, you were the one, the last two years, you be saying, 'I wanna come back home to play.'"

DeRozan smiled and said, "Yeah. Nothing but respect for [team president] Lawrence Frank and the whole Clippers organization. Great people. It definitely was an opportunity that presented itself. I think, for me, the Chicago thing just took off by the time they were on their way to my house to where it was a situation, you know, I just didn't want to pass up."

He continued: "It really happened that way. It could've been a day earlier, it would've worked." DeRozan said it was "a real possibility" that "we would've been teammates again." The two of them played together for the Toronto Raptors from February 2017 until the trade that sent DeRozan to the San Antonio Spurs in July 2018.

"So, it's money talks," Ibaka said.

"I mean, everything talks," DeRozan said. "The whole dynamic of the team and the opportunity. I talked to Paul George. I had talked to P.G. about it, and we was really talking about it, you know? We was really trying to figure it out and make it happen, but what needed to be figured out didn't get figured out for us to make it happen."

What the Clippers needed to figure out was how they could make DeRozan a competitive offer. The Clippers were scheduled to meet with him on Tuesday, Aug. 3, and DeRozan said he'd talked to Frank the day before, which is when teams were officially allowed to negotiate with free agents. At that point, they had yet to re-sign Kawhi Leonard and Reggie Jackson and they had yet to trade Patrick Beverley, Rajon Rondo and Daniel Oturu. DeRozan didn't plan on settling for the mid-level exception, so Clippers brass would have had to work out a deal with the Spurs (likely involving Beverley and Rondo, perhaps involving Luke Kennard and Ivica Zubac) and sell DeRozan on taking what the collective bargaining agreement allowed them to give him. 

"It wasn't like, 'You coming, I'm signing,'" DeRozan said. "It was more so like, 'Come in, let's see how we can make this thing work.' And obviously it was mutual interest, but it was just like, 'OK how can this thing work? How can we make it work?' It would have had to have been a pay cut."

DeRozan clarified that he was willing to take "less money" but not "a big pay cut." He agreed to a three-year, $81.9 million contract with Chicago that would have been virtually impossible for the Clippers to match, given that they would have been hard-capped and needed to re-sign Leonard. 

"When I got the Chicago thing done, it was just like, 'I'm not going to waste your time and have you come all the way," DeRozan said.

Essentially, DeRozan confirmed what Yahoo Sports' Chris Haynes said the day after the deal went down: DeRozan had a good offer from the Bulls, so his agent, Aaron Goodwin, called the Clippers and canceled the meeting because they "were going to have to do a ton of work to even get to the point to where they could offer DeMar something of value." Haynes reported that Clippers brass was driving to DeRozan's house at the time. 

After discussing the homecoming that was not to be, Ibaka asked DeRozan about another reunion that didn't happen: If Toronto had offered DeRozan a similar contract, would he have considered going there instead of Chicago?

"If Kyle [Lowry] was there," DeRozan said.

DeRozan said that he loves Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby, but he wouldn't have returned to this version of the Raptors. 

"I think I told one of those guys this, too," DeRozan said. "That's their team now. You know what I mean? My history there is stamped and sealed, and it started with me and Kyle. And that's the only person I'd want to keep it rolling with. I wouldn't feel like myself if I went back trying to be what I was. They earned everything they have there. They earned (the opportunity) to be the starters, to be the face of that franchise. That's them. And I love rooting for them from elsewhere."

Ibaka's follow-up: What if Lowry had joined with the Clippers, rather than the Miami Heat? Would DeRozan have followed?

"I probably would have taken a 10 to 15 percent pay cut," DeRozan said. 

DeRozan then said, laughing, that Lowry wouldn't have taken a pay cut, so, in this scenario, the Clippers wouldn't have had any money left anyway.

As interesting as it is to think about DeRozan as a Clipper -- and being teammates with Leonard, just three years after they were traded for each other -- or rejoining the Raptors, it's hard to imagine a better outcome than the one he chose. At 32 years old, DeRozan's 12th season has been his finest one. He's going to be on MVP ballots, he might make the All-NBA First Team and his contract looks like an underpay.