DeMar DeRozan had been, and planned to be, a Raptor for his entire NBA career up until the wee hours of Wednesday morning when news broke that the Spurs and Raptors had agreed to a deal sending DeRozan to San Antonio and Kawhi Leonard to Toronto.
While a surprising move, it’s not a complete stunner as this was one of the few moves that made sense for the Raptors to try if they felt the need to really shake up the roster after having stagnated a bit with the core group as is. Even though you can argue for it making business sense in the immediate, the Raptors certainly didn’t shower themselves in glory with this trade when it comes to how the organization will be viewed by players around the league, who cried foul at the lack of loyalty to their franchise player.
We’ll have to wait to see what the long-term ramifications of this move are, as Toronto has never been a free agent destination and this doesn’t seem to help matters there. In San Antonio, they’re getting an All-Star under contract for at least two more years in return for their disgruntled star, which seems to be a win for them. It’s going to take some time to adjust to DeRozan as a member of the Spurs, but lucky for us the folks at 2K Sports offered up a first look at DeRozan in a Spurs jersey, along with his rating for NBA 2K19.
https://twitter.com/NBA2K/status/1019662344060690432
The 89 rating is the same as his 2K18 rating, and for early context it’s nine shy of LeBron James and two points ahead of Jayson Tatum. DeRozan going to a Spurs organization that has a track record of tapping into players’ potential and extracting the most out of them bodes well for the 28-year-old, who may be able to continue improving and find himself cracking into the 90s while in San Antonio. The rating given to Kawhi will be far more interesting, given his injury status and having not played much basketball over the last year.
