While promoting his new book Above the noiseDeMar DeRozan spoke about the trade that sent him from the Toronto Raptors to the San Antonio Spurs.
DeRozan, who began his career playing for the Raptors, had tremendous success alongside Kyle Lowry in Toronto. But after multiple All-Star appearances and late playoff appearances, management opted to trade DeRozan for Kawhi Leonard ahead of the 2018-19 season.
The Raptors went on to win the 2019 NBA championship, their first in franchise history. But on ESPN First takeStephen A. Smith asked an interesting question.
Smith argued that at that time in the Toronto franchise, the only team the Raptors seemed to struggle against was LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers.
He wondered if the Raptors would still have won a title in 2019 if they still had DeRozan, and not Leonard, since James left the Eastern Conference to sign with the Los Angeles Lakers.
It seems DeRozan agrees with the theory, stating the following:
“I don’t want to discredit those guys. They won. They deserved it. I finally got to a point where I was happy for them. But for sure. I really feel that way. The only person we couldn’t beat was LeBron. That’s exactly what it was. I felt like we were down from the year before, we just needed one more piece to push us over the top. That piece happened to be LeBron going West and I didn’t get to see what would have happened. But with the utmost confidence in myself, I have no doubt in my mind that the same outcome would have happened.”
It’s good for DeRozan to have enough confidence in himself to actually believe it.
He’s right: the only team standing in his way was the Cavaliers, and with James in the Western Conference with the Lakers that season, it was finally DeRozan’s chance to win it all. But it was Leonard who won the NBA Finals MVP award in 2019.
Of course, it might have been a lot harder for the Raptors to defeat the Philadelphia 76ers (who were also juggernauts that season) without Leonard.
