Los Angeles is no doubt amenable to having him.
Six-time All-Star swingman DeMar DeRozan, a Compton native, was one of the Los Angeles Lakers' potential free agent targets during the team's ill-fated 2021 offseason, as All-Stars LeBron James and Anthony Davis sought to form a fresh "Big Three" in Tinseltown.
Instead, they landed on former 2017 MVP point guard Russell Westbrook, for whom they offloaded much of their 2020 championship team. L.A. finished 33-49 in 2021-22 and ultimately had to trade Westbrook midway through the 2022-23 season to even make the playoffs. DeRozan, meanwhile, had the best regular season of his career after agreeing to a sign-and-trade with the Chicago Bulls.
Now 34, DeRozan is poised to become a free agent this summer, should he not agree to terms on a contract extension with Chicago prior to July 1. The 6-foot-6 swingman has performed admirably during his last two years with the Bulls, but the team's unwillingness to make any player-related trades at all or to add meaningful free agent additions has doomed it to two consecutive seasons of play-in misery.
When asked on FanDuel TV's "Run It Back" by cohost Chandler Parsons about whether he'd be interested in joining his hometown team, DeRozan offered a coy-if-open-minded answer."Everybody knows I'm a Kobe guy at the end of the day," DeRozan said. "Always been a Kobe guy. Been a Laker fan since Day 1. You can't never say no about playing home, especially if you're playing for a historic team like the Lakers.
Would DeRozan solve all of L.A.'s problems? No, but he is a great playmaker and efficient scorer who rarely gets hurt. He's flawed for a modern player he's but great at what he does well. Los Angeles could put together a package in a sign-and-trade deal that could probably allow him to get at least within a range of the money Chicago offered him, but it would limit the rest of the talent up and down the roster.
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