Chicago Bulls forward DeMar DeRozan, left, drives against Detroit Pistons guard Jaden Ivey during the second half of an NBA basketball game in Chicago, on April 9. The Raptors traded DeRozan five years ago but he's still a favourite among local fans.Nam Y. Huh/The Associated Press
One of Toronto’s favourite sons has a chance to extinguish the Raptors’ humdrum season on Wednesday night.
DeMar DeRozan and the Chicago Bulls come to town for a win-or-go-home game against the Toronto Raptors, with a potential playoff spot hanging in the balance. It’s the closest thing the beloved former Raptor has gotten to a revenge game since the franchise traded him away five years ago.
“I just always liked watching him … like just his work first and then on the floor, like the things that he’s able to do mid-range,” said Raptors star Pascal Siakam, whose first two NBA seasons overlapped with DeRozan in Toronto. “If you’re a player out there, then you want to look at someone that’s mastered something. He’s one of those guys.”
DeRozan played his first nine seasons in Canada, after the Raptors drafted him ninth overall in 2009. His memorable on-court partnership with point guard Kyle Lowry made him beloved in Toronto. The duo began to carry the Raps to yearly playoff appearances, until they traded DeRozan away to the San Antonio Spurs in a package for Kawhi Leonard, who delivered the city an NBA title in his single season as a Raptor.
That variety of April excitement that comes with a high playoff seed seems a distant memory in Toronto this spring, after the Raps floundered this season. Still, with this 83rd game, the Raptors get a chance to extend it. It’s the club’s first-ever appearance in the play-in, a mini tournament added a few seasons ago to add excitement down the stretch of the NBA season. It sees the seventh- to 10th-place finishers in the regular season play off for the final two seeds in each conference.
The ninth-place Raptors (41-40) need two victories to earn a spot in the playoffs. Should they beat the 10th-place Bulls (40-42), the Raps would swiftly hit the road for a Friday contest against the seventh-place Miami Heat, who lost the other East play-in game to the eighth-place Atlanta Hawks, now officially the No. 7 seed in the playoffs. The eventual prize up for grabs for the Heat, Raptors or Bulls is hardly scintillating: the No.8 seed playoff seed, and a first-round series against the NBA-leading Milwaukee Bucks.
In the three years that the tournament has existed, no play-in team has ever gone on to win a playoff series. But there’s no sense envisioning that whole daunting, improbable run now, when the first order of business is stopping DeRozan, who at 33 has been an explosive scorer with Chicago.
DeRozan has averaged 24.5 points, 4.6 rebounds and 5.1 assists this season. However, his lowest scoring average against any opponent this year was the 14 per game he put up against Toronto.
He has faced the Raps 13 times since that trade in 2018, going 7-6.
The Raps will aim to limit his touches and force him into difficult shots, leaving the rest of the Bulls to step up.
OG Anunoby has defended DeRozan most in their meetings this season, someone from whom Anunoby learned after the Raps drafted him in 2017. The two remain friends today.
“DeMar was real nice to me. He was a good guy. He’s still a great friend of mine,” Anunoby said earlier this week. “We all looked up to him and he did a good job teaching us.”
Jakob Poeltl, who went along with DeRozan to San Antonio in that 2019 trade, says DeRozan took his playmaking to a new level while with the Spurs.
“When he was here, it was really like Kyle Lowry running the show and he was an iso-scorer for us,” said Poeltl, who returned to the Raptors late this season. “Like he was scoring, still dishing out the ball, but it went to a whole new level when we were in San Antonio because he was handling the ball a lot more in pick-and-rolls … not only for his own shot but trying to create for myself or other teammates.”
The Bulls have other weapons that will need containing besides DeRozan, including Zach LaVine, Patrick Beverley, Alex Caruso, Nikola Vucevic and Andre Drummond.
The two teams met three times this season. Toronto won two of those, by an average of 7.5 points. Chicago’s lone victory was a comfy one, by 14 points.
Toronto fans still love DeRozan, but he’s unlikely to show their team any mercy on Wednesday night.