It was a tough pill to swallow. After nine seasons in Toronto, DeMar DeRozan was shocked to find out that he had been traded to the San Antonio Spurs.
In an interview with Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Abrams, DeRozan detailed the exact moment he was informed about the move:
DeRozan found out about the trade after getting out of a screening of The Equalizer 2, featuring Denzel Washington. Upon leaving the movie theater in Los Angeles late into the night, he checked his phone. “[I] was wondering why I was getting missed calls,” he says.
He was hungry, so he went to get something to eat at a Jack in the Box. In the parking lot, he got the call telling him he had just been traded to San Antonio. “It just caught me off guard,” he says. “I sat in the Jack in the Box parking lot for, like, two hours just trying to process it all, like just trying to process the whole thing, and it just tripped me out honestly, just trying to figure it out, but that’s how I found out. Midnight, sitting in the Jack in the Box parking lot for about two hours till I went home.”
DeRozan went on to explain how the deal made him realize there are few things you can fully control:
“Just because I say I’m going to go walk outside doesn’t mean I can dictate if I’m going to be able to make it up the street or not. That’s how it hit me. … No matter what you do, you really don’t have control of nothing. You gotta be ready and prepared for anything that comes.
“And that’s how I took it. Because every player works to want to have that power. That was part of the reason why I worked so hard. I wanted to not have no excuse or have no complaints [about] … anything when it comes to work. To have that taken away from me, it showed reality: You don’t have control of anything. As much as we all try to believe it, we don’t.”
So far this season, the Spurs guard is averaging 25.2 points, 6.8 rebounds and 6.5 assists per game.
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