DeMar DeRozan will suit up for the Sacramento Kings this 2024-25 season and he explains how the franchise went to great efforts to recruit him over the summer.
DeRozan was a free agent this off-season and being such a skilled veteran, he had plenty of offers from NBA teams around the league.
He recently detailed how he would have liked to go to the Lakers or Clippers, but that wasn’t to be.
Another Californian team was knocking on the door though, DeMar revealed.
“Man, all those guys had reached out,” DeRozan told Brian Windhorst on The Hoop Collective. “The crazy thing is, I remember one morning I had a text from Malik [Monk] and De’Aaron [Fox]. Obviously, I’ve known Trey Lyles for years, I played with him in San Antonio.
“[Kings assistant coach] Leandro Barbosa reached out, he was on my team when I was in my second in the league, so he was blowing my phone up nonstop so everybody, it was kind of like a collective effort that made me feel overly wanted.”
Some older players can be worried about going to a new team and building chemistry, but DeMar isn’t worried in the slightest.
“What was great was a couple of weeks ago, Sabonis wanted to come out to LA to work out with me we spent a whole week together just working out,” DeRozan told Windhorst. “Guys embrace me, guys ask questions. It’s so much that people haven’t even gotten a chance to see us trying to build that chemistry and understand that everybody there wants to win.
“You got a great coach in Mike Brown who wants to win that’s going to push it so to me, I see myself fitting in just fine.”
For the Bulls in 2023-24, DeMar averaged 24 points, 4.3 rebounds and 5.3 assists on 48 percent shooting from the field.