WATCH: DeMar DeRozan Admits To Wanting To Join Clippers

rsz usa demar derozan 11
rsz usa demar derozan 11

DeMar DeRozan was born and raised in Compton, California, just a handful of miles away from the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. There has been a recent influx of native southern Californians who have made their way back to LA to play for their hometown teams, and DeRozan was apparently almost one of them.

DeMar DeRozan Thought About Joining Clippers

It truly started with Paul George and Kawhi Leonard. The star duo joined the Los Angeles Clippers in 2019 as a part of a package deal that would help raise the team out of little brother status in the city. Leonard is technically from San Diego, but his acquisition by the Clippers was considered something of a homecoming. George was born just outside of LA in the city of Palmdale.

The experiment hasn’t quite worked out the way that the team has hoped. The Clippers have become yearly contenders, but they have been unable to make it over the hump, due largely to injuries to their star players.

According to DeRozan himself, they could have had another star on the team, too.

On a recent episode of George’s podcast, he sat down with DeRozan and asked him a myriad of questions. One of them was if he ever considered coming back to play in Los Angeles at any point.

“I used to feel like that. I used to think like man, ‘I gotta play home and see what it’s like’… I’m at a stage now where I’m okay if I don’t. It’s not like an ultimate desire of mine.”

George then went on to say that he was trying to recruit DeRozan, which was most likely around the time that he was traded from the Spurs to the Bulls. He reiterates that he was unsure of how the Clippers would acquire him given the pieces that they had at the time, but that he pushed for it to happen.

DeRozan responds by saying that he had interest in the situation as well, and that it was the business side of things that kept him from actually coming home and playing in Los Angeles.

He says that he doesn’t have the itch to come home anymore, but we’ll see in about a year’s time if he holds true to that notion. He is set to become an unrestricted free agent and the end of the 2023-24 NBA season.


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