DeMar DeRozan on Lakers’ lack of interest in him despite support from LeBron and AD: ‘They made their choice’

NBA star DeMar DeRozan revealed how he felt knowing that the Los Angeles Lakers did not reciprocate his interest in joining the team.

“Yeah, you just learn how to deal with it from a business standpoint,” DeRozan told The Athletic when asked how the Lakers’ perceived lack of interest hit him. “Obviously I have my selfish reasons of wanting to be able to play at home, (but) sometimes it just doesn’t work out that way. And sometimes it probably isn’t the best decision for me either. So after that didn’t happen, I didn’t dwell on it. I wasn’t mad. They made their choice, and I just left it at that.”

DeRozan admitted that at one point it appeared as if he would join the Lakers, and LeBron James and Anthony Davis were seemingly all for him coming to Los Angeles.

“Yeah,” DeRozan said regarding if he believed he was going to end up in a Lakers uniform. “Yeah, it did. But after the last time, the last situation, you really don’t get your hopes all the way up. I think the first time before I went to Chicago (in 2021), that was the closest it had been. And even for me, I thought it was going to be that. But when that didn’t happen, I didn’t have high hopes because you already see how it could play out.”

The 35-year-old dropped a truth bomb on potentially joining the Lakers back in May, which was prior to the start of free agency.

However, DeRozan ended up landing with a different team. The Sacramento Kings acquired him in a sign-and-trade deal. The Kings traded Harrison Barnes to the San Antonio Spurs and Chris Duarte to the Chicago Bulls as part of the deal for DeRozan.

One would be hard-pressed to find a more consistent scoring threat over the past decade than DeRozan. He has averaged 20-plus points in each of his 11 seasons in the NBA, and he is fresh off a season with the Bulls during which he averaged 24.0 points per game.

What makes DeRozan’s scoring consistency particularly impressive is that — unlike a lot of players at his position in the NBA today — he doesn’t rely heavily on the 3-point arc to score his points. In fact, he has never averaged more than 3.6 3s attempted per game in a single season since he has joined the pros.

It’s also arguably in DeRozan’s best interest to not take too many shots from deep, considering he is a career 29.6 percent 3-point shooter.

Sans the 3-point shot as a staple of his offensive game, DeRozan still averaged the 17th-most points of any player in the league last season — more than stars like Jaylen Brown, Paul George and Paolo Banchero.

While it would have been entertaining to watch DeRozan play alongside James and Davis on the Lakers, there are question marks about his fit with Los Angeles’ star duo. It’s worth noting that neither James nor Davis are exactly great 3-point shooters either, even though the former shot a career-high 41.0 percent from deep last season.

Hence, there potentially would have been a startling lack of 3-point shooting in the the Lakers’ starting lineup if DeRozan ended up in Los Angeles instead of Sacramento.