By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Before DeMar DeRozan moved to the Chicago Bulls in the 2021 free agency to lead them to their best season in years, Draymond Green tried to recruit him to join his Golden State Warriors.
DeRozan’s response? “F–k no,” as Green described while recalling these events in an interview with the Bulls star guard for his show on YouTube.
Here’s what Green said: “I feel like I’ve lived this with you all year. From last year’s free agency and talking to you every day like… ‘You good?’ What about this, what about that? Then the conversation turned to, like ‘Come to the Warriors’ and you’re like ‘F–k no I’m not coming to play with y’all.’ And I’m like, but you come to the Warriors… we can win a championship if you come to the Warriors’ He didn’t come. We still won a championship but he didn’t come. Had to throw that out there.”
Green mentioned his dialogue with DeRozan after the latter described how he experienced a depressive kind of uncertainty before he ultimately went to the Bulls via a sign-and-trade deal.
“That summer came and free agency,” DeRozan said. “It didn’t go as planned. That kind of brought so much doubt in for me and brought me to a dark place because I started questioning. ‘Where am I going now?’ ‘What player am I going to be?’ So many of these questions started to creep in. Big names always kind of sign in the first day or two. I think I had a couple of days in free agency with such a question mark still. Was I going somewhere with a one-year deal? Was I going to take the minimum? The narrative of it was such… It put me in a f–ked up place honestly. I remember through that whole time, three-four days in a row, I didn’t leave my room. I didn’t see the sun. I was depressed. It put me in a depressed mindset because I didn’t know what the f–k was going to happen. Los Angeles didn’t happen. You see guys signing in other places. They were hitting me about what I’m gonna do. There were certain moments I had no clue what I was going to do.”
DeRozan had a fantastic run with the Bulls. He averaged a career-high 27.9 points, plus 5.2 rebounds and 4.9 assists as the team made the playoffs for the first time since 2017.
“When the Chicago thing came around and I made that happen it was such a relief,” DeRozan said. “But at the same time, it angered and it put me in a very frustrating mental of… like ‘F–k this’. I’m about to demolish everything you say about me. I’m not going to say anything, just going to work my ass off and I’m going to prove – not just for myself – but anybody who felt that they get counted out or doubted, that they can do something. My whole career was kind of based on that but I never let it bring me completely down. It knocked me down but I got back up. For me, that moment of going to Chicago, I told myself this is a new opportunity and I’m going to make the most out of it in every way.”