Playing For Gregg Popovich Eased DeMar DeRozan’s Pain of Being Traded to the Spurs

DeMar DeRozan was a bona fide Raptors legend, and the trade in 2018 that sent him to San Antonio took many by surprise, including Deebo himself. On the Club 520 Podcast, the 6x All-Star broke down the adjustment period, after a heartbreaking move away from the 6ix. 

The 9th overall pick in the 2009 NBA draft, DeRozan quickly became the cornerstone player for the franchise. However, after spending the first 9 years of career with the Raptors, the team’s front office didn’t think twice before parting ways with him.

After being packaged and traded for Kawhi Leonard, DeRozan was very open about how his mental health, already at a low point during the 2018 postseason, took a turn for the worse. Though the entire league empathized with his suffering, the USC product revealed how Spurs’ head coach Gregg Popovich helped him deal with the torment during his time in San Antonio.

When one of Jeff Teague’s co-hosts asked him about the transition from Toronto to San Antonio, DeRozan said,

“When I got traded, I didn’t talk to nobody for like f**king two weeks. I wouldn’t answer my phone, I was mad as shit…Pop had called me out the blue and just was like, ‘Look, we didn’t trade you, we traded for you.’ And when I let that sink in, I was like, ‘Goddamn, he got a f**king point.’”

Heartbroken over feeling discarded, DeRozan decided to shut himself out from the outside world. 

However, the Compton native got a helping hand from one of the most respected coaches in NBA history. Coach Pop reached out to DeRozan and managed to get through to him. And that wasn’t all that Pop did. He mentioned how the 5x Champ went the extra mile to make him feel welcome to the city and the team, while also imparting his basketball knowledge to him.

“Just to be underneath Pop, the game from him. The way he just took me in and accepted me, as more than just a basketball player. The help with the transition, I’ll cherish that sh*t forever because it was something that I needed in my career at the time.”

Even though DeRozan eventually left San Antonio for the Bulls, he formed a lifelong bond with Coach Pop, much like many NBA legends have before him.