- Have you ever thought about rapping?
- What made you ask me that?
- His size. This is not for me.
- Yeah. - I am not a 13!
- Yeah, I need it. - [Laughing]
When the Raptors traded you, did you feel more hurt or more angry?
- I…
[♪♪♪]
- [Announcer]: It’s off to Leonard, defended by Simmons.
Is this the dagger?
[Buzzer sounding]
- Ohhh! - [Cheering]
- The big storyline during the playoffs now has kinda been, like,
“What’s DeMar thinking watching the Raptors playing?”
So what is DeMar thinking?
- Um,
people gotta understand, like, my best friend is Kyle.
- [Announcer]: Career high for Kyle Lowry!
- So, I’m rootin’ for my best friend, you know,
to do well, to accomplish something that we tried to do all those years,
and he has the opportunity to do it.
Some guys on the team, they know, you know, I’m rootin’ for ‘em.
- I know that now this narrative is, like, “They couldn’t get there with DeMar.”
“They can only get there now cuz they have Kawhi.”
- Mhmm. - What is your response to that?
- Honestly, I don’t even think I said this— I probably said this to my own inner circle—
but if it wasn’t for all the years and groundwork that I did before then,
none of them things would’ve been possible.
Yes, I fought. I sacrificed.
I pushed the limits to where I had to be the sacrificial lamb.
You just have to sit back and understand, like, you know,
you are the reason so many things was even possible.
- [Announcer]: It’s up and good! With 1.9 remaining.
- To their credit, they probably felt like it was time to see
what we could get to make that next jump.
- When the Raptors traded you, did you feel more hurt or more angry?
- More hurt, because, you know, being invested from 19 to—I was, what, 28?
You know, everything you learn was from there.
Everything you gained was from there.
So for that—[snapping fingers]—to be gone like that
when you least expect it, it just throws you off guard.
You know, we human at the end of the day and it, it definitely hits you.
- Now, you’re in San Antonio. - Mhmm.
- Playin’ with the Spurs. Most importantly, playin’ for Popovich.
- Pop is cool. He’s like a Don Corleone.
You know, he makes you look at him not just
like the basketball coach, but like, you know, a great individual.
And I called him the other day just to talk, talk trash to him,
and he not good with workin’ the iPhones and all that.
Like, he hates technology to a passion, so he always
talk about he gonna put somethin’ on Twitter, like, knowin’ he ain’t got a Twitter.
- Mhmm. - Like, you know, he called it Twittergram.
“I’mma put somethin’ on Twittergram and see if they catch this,”
and somethin’ like, just stuff like that.
- Twittergram, the newest app. - Yeah.
- Gimme an example of something he educated you guys on in a meeting.
- I remember one meeting, I’m thinkin’ we were gonna watch film.
He put on a penguin movie.
It was the most crazy—
- Like, “The March—”
- Like, the whole thing from, you know, having a baby,
to the male carrying the egg, to the women go out,
fish for food, bring back the food.
Two months later, penguins walk 90 miles with the egg.
The whole point of it was how life is a full circle, you know,
and how we all—as long as we work together and stick together and stay
on the same track, how we could accomplish the most impossible mission.
- I remember reading he will spend tons of money on team dinners throughout the season.
- Mandatory. He called it “break bread.”
Win, lose or draw, after a game,
if we stayin’ over in a city, we got a team dinner.
We goin’ to break bread, we gonna have a good night, a good evening.
You know, we’re family.
[♪♪♪]
- Let’s go buy some shoes! - Get it!
So this the spot.
- Is it like heaven?
- It’s everything.
- Ahhhh.
- You know, this, this my go-to spot
- You come in here, there’s a lotta shoes. Where do you start?
- Sometimes I think about my favorite Jordans,
which ones I don’t have or I can’t find, and I come in here
and look for ‘em and see what they got, like—
- Which Jordans stick out to you up here?
- Hmmm, what Jordans, to me, I feel like I need? Probably these.
The Shattered Backboards.
- What about those? Like, what makes those stick out?
- Cuz I don’t think I have these.
- How many sneakers do you have? The real number.
- That’s a great question. Um, I play in a different shoe every single game,
so I probably go through at least 100 pairs of shoes in a season.
- Yeah. - Every single game, I play in new shoes.
My shoes at home, it’s definitely at a couple hundred.
Probably, uh—
- More than two? - For sure.
- More than four? - Yeah.
- More than 600? - Probably up there for sure.
- Are there any shoes that, like, take you to a specific
memory or a specific game when you look at ‘em?
- These were the fake Jordans I had.
- Those are the ones your dad got you?
- Yeah, the 13s.
- How’d you know they were fake?
- With the Jumpman the other way, and I poked a hole in a bubble.
The Jordan was fake, everything, like, with these—
- But it’s great cuz I know you still loved ‘em.
- Oh, yeah, without a doubt.
I wore ‘em. I wore ‘em till they had a hole in ‘em, literally.
I like these. I might get these.
These are awesome.
- And so you don’t even have to try ‘em on, you just know?
- Nah, nah. Yeah, I know my feet.
Nope.
- Now, when you say that you wear a new shoe every game,
do you mean new, never been worn, or new—?
- Never been worn. Brand new.
- OK, explain why.
- I don’t tie my shoes when I play. Like, I do not lace my shoes at all.
I like my shoes tight-fit.
So when they’re brand new, they fit my feet perfectly.
So once I play, my shoe’s broken into,
I’m done with them shoes.
Need a new one next game.
- What size shoe are you? - 13.
- Do you guys have this in a 13?
His size. This is not for me.
- I am not a 13!
- Yeah, I need it if you got ‘em for me.
I walk around in a 13; I hoop in a 14.
- Well, I’m happy that I know now.
- Yeah. What would you get?
- What I’d get, I don’t think is over here. I think it’s over here.
- All right. - OK.
- Let’s take a look over here.
I have every Kobe in the world.
- You really have every single Kobe shoe?
- Yeah, I have every single Kobe shoe.
- Talk to me about what Kobe has meant to you, cuz I know that’s a very,
like, key figure in your basketball life.
- Kob was somebody I just gravitated to and always rooted for.
I remember his rookie year when he was, when he played at Utah
and he air-balled all them threes, and, you know,
I remember everybody killin’ him.
And, I don’t know, I just remember being emotional as a kid.
Like, “Damn, why they doin’ that? Why they doin’ that?”
- “You doin’ my dawg like that.”
- Yeah, man, like, this my favorite player, and it just grew
over time to where that was my favorite player to bein’ able to
have a relationship with him, to be able to play against him.
- Now Kobe, of course, was a Laker.
- Do you ever have any dreams of playing in L.A.?
- I think you’d be crazy to say you never wanted to play at home.
Everybody always wanna have the opportunity, but I think
I’m definitely happy where I’m at, and I’ll watch ‘em from a distance.
- What do you love more, shoes or music?
And you have to pick. Don’t say both.
- Music. - Really?
- Yeah, music. I think for me, I need that constant
new music of something you can relate to.
You need it. You need it for every and any type of mood.
- What’d you listen to on your way to the interview?
- Nipsey.
- Nipsey Hussle. Old, new, whatever, just Nip in rotation.
- Grammy-nominated rapper and community activist
Nipsey Hussle was murdered
in broad daylight outside a clothing store
that he owned in South Los Angeles.
And he was killed just before he was about to meet
with city leaders and the LAPD
about reducing gang violence.
- [Rooks]: What made him so special to you?
- [DeRozan]: I grew up in Compton. Roughest of the rough.
To us comin’ from the urban area, you know,
we seen a guy like Nipsey start from nothin’.
You know, he was our motivation.
He was a different type of light for us that we could, we could relate to.
We understood, and there’s a lotta people I’m close to that still live there.
People gettin’ killed, people gettin’— it’s so much of that reality that’s my reality.
The crazy thing, I think it was about two or three weeks before, I had dinner with him.
We had the most in-depth conversations about, you know, life.
About how to be a better individual.
How to, you know, give back. How to make sure your people straight.
A plan to do something great.
That’s something that’s always gonna, you know, I’mma stick,
stick close to me for sure because I remember that night like it was yesterday.
- So have you ever thought about rapping?
- Oh my god. [Sighing]
I mean, did somebody tell you something?
- I just wanna know the answer. This is, I’m asking you the questions.
- All right, this is, this is another exclusive that I’mma say here on your show.
- OK. - Only people close to me know, know this.
But I have, like, an album/mixtape.
- Tell me about this album/mixtape, OK?!
Could we get a track? - Oh, man.
You know, the last two summers, honestly, I been thinkin’ about,
like, just leakin’ a song and see what happens.
- OK, tell me one lyric you’ve written you love.
Just one! You gotta give us a taste!
- Yo, you settin’ me up!
- One lyric. Something from a song.
- I’m tryna find any way to get outta this right now, I ain’t gonna lie.
I’m just tryin’ to make up somethin’, like—
- Cuz this is the thing, everyone’s about to know.
This is gonna be on Bleacher Report. They gonna know you rap.
OK, if you had to pick a rapper— I’m not saying you sound like them,
but you think that your sound is maybe similar?
- I don’t know. It’s just me, like, you know,
West Coast Compton sound.
I’ve gotten Ice Cube.
- OK! - Yeah.
I’d had a few of my rapper friends, like, kinda compliment me,
so it gave me a little bit more confidence.
- What rappers have complimented your music?
- I let Kendrick hear one of my songs before.
I let Drake hear.
You about to have me go viral about bein’ a rapper.
- It’s gonna be great.
- Oh my god. - It’s gonna be so great.
- I never thought the day would come.
- Then just gotta make it my ringtone.
DeMar’s song will be my ringtone.
- Oh, I’mma be gettin’ tagged in so much stuff.
- What were Drake’s critiques of your rap?
- I was at one of his shows. He played it in the back.
Everybody was back there, and he played it.
And everybody—only he knew it was me.
- Yeah.
- But everybody was like—
“I don’t even know who you are anymore, DeMar.”
Like, what are you talking about?
- Wait, but so everyone’s listening to it, didn’t know it was you,
but they liked the song?
- Yeah, you know what I mean, but—
- You felt good, though.
- No, I felt good.
- Yeah. - I was cool with that, like, my dawgs—
nobody else need to hear this. I’m cool.
- Now, in 2018, you publicly acknowledged depression by tweeting,
“This depression gets the best of me.”
- Mhmm.
- When it gets the best of you, what does that look like?
- You know, everything just build up at once.
You know, you kinda shut yourself out from everything.
A lotta people don’t understand, you know,
and you kinda could be around a group of people and still feel alone.
- What was going on for you personally at that moment that you sent that tweet?
- I think it was an overwhelming of everything.
When I tweeted, that was All-Star Weekend in L.A.,
and being in L.A., being a starter on the All-Star team.
I’m just excited to get home, wanna see my kids, wanna chill.
Everything just became so overwhelming,
you know, and I just had that moment.
You know, I turned to Twitter, which is the devil.
- So when you sent it, though, you’re like,
“OK, this feels good”? Did you get nervous?
- Yeah, in the moment. I didn’t think nothin’ other than,
“What have I done? Now I gotta deal with this head-on.”
- So any time I’m doing an interview, I always try to ask
people that know my guests about them,
and what they would ask them, what they think of the person.
So when I asked Kevin Love about what you have meant to his life,
this was what he said to me.
- Mhmm.
- “DeMar opened the door for me, and at a time I needed it the most.
I thank him and show love for him every time I see him now.
It’s more than just a, ‘Hey, I’ve known you since high school’ brotherly hello.
It’s more of a, ‘You helped me out of the darkness’ type of bond,
whether he knows it or not.”
- Kevin said that?
- Yep.
- Man, where you at, Kev? That’s a hug from me to you, Kev.
No, Kev my man, like— that meant a lot.
Nobody never know what we go through as athletes,
you know, so for me to open the door in my selfish moment of feeling how I felt,
and, you know, just sayin’, “Fuck it,
I’mma just go out and be straight up with this.”
For him lookin’ at me in a light, like, I helped him out, that’s dope.
- Yeah, and for the words that he used were so powerful—
- Yeah. - That you got him out of a darkness.
- If we could do that for one another, imagine what we doin’ for everybody else.
- Mhmm.
- You know, we just settin’ the tone for that,
and we really doin’ something that’s really inspiring.
That’s definitely cool.
- What helps you now get through depression?
- My two daughters, setting the greatest example for them.
The light that they look at me in is like I’m Superman.
With that in the back of my mind in everything I do,
it makes it easy to be motivated, to push, to go through the pain,
to go through the tough times, to understand how to be better,
you know, for them.
There’s no beatin’ that.
[♪♪♪]
Yeah, this it for me.
- Carry all these.
- I gotchu.
- No, I got it. - You got it?
- I got it.
I’mma do a bar, you do a bar.
- No, all right, let’s just keep it to ourselves.
Let’s keep it to ourselves.
- I wanna freestyle, but I can’t think of a line.
Um— you don’t have to freestyle, I will.
OK?
[Rapping] In the interview, learn he don’t drink booze.
We in the car, goin’ to buy some shoes. - Shoes.
- Bar!
- Bars.
Bars!
That was bars.
- That’s all you need. Hey, that’s all you need.
- Boom.
And then, Taylor out.
- Oh, it’s a video? - Is this good light, DeMar?
- Yeah, that’s a good one.
- You gotta go high.
- Lemme check out the show whenever it drop.
Album comin’—maybe, maybe not.
I’m glad, honored, that I could end off the season.
I appreciate everybody for watching.
- Absolutely.