All things being equal, it might be fair to wonder if DeMar DeRozan would have been a Clipper, not Laker, had he signed somewhere in Los Angeles.
DeRozan had laid the groundwork for years that he wanted to play for the Lakers. But when he was a free agent this past offseason, things never ultimately fell into place, and he ended up with the Chicago Bulls via a sign and trade from the San Antonio Spurs.
The Lakers, for their part, pivoted and made the ultimately ill-fated decision to acquire Russell Westbrook. Given Westbrook has been a mess while DeRozan has been a star for the Bulls, Magic Johnson really fanned the flames this week when he blamed LeBron James for things falling through with DeRozan.
Interestingly, it might not have been squarely on LeBron. While appearing on the “Brian Windhorst and the Hoop Collective” podcast, ESPN’s Ohm Youngmisuk said he had gotten the sense that DeRozan didn’t walk away from his interactions with the Lakers this offseason impressed.
"When Magic talks, you always get a sense that there’s a lot of disarray, there’s a lot of problems, there’s no cohesion with the people who make decisions with the Lakers,” Youngmisuk said. “Magic has a longtime relationship with DeMar DeRozan’s agent Aaron Goodwin. They go back over two decades, they are very tight. Have they had their ups and downs? Yes, but that’s another story for another day. But basically, Magic is saying I brought them DeMar DeRozan and they could’ve had DeMar DeRozan, and whatever happened it didn’t work out and they ended up with Russell Westbrook.
“I talked to someone from DeRozan’s camp when DeRozan was in town in LA and he basically stuck it to the Lakers. And the impression that I got from his camp was that DeRozan felt that the Lakers were in sort of disarray, they didn’t have a vision, they didn’t know what they were doing. And the Clippers, to Bobby (Marks’) point, didn’t have much to offer at all. But if they did and could’ve pulled something off and paid him and maybe done a sign-and-trade, DeRozan’s camp actually was impressed with the Clipper vision. Not to say he would’ve ended up there, but he did want to be in LA. And, of course, things worked out in Chicago.”
The Lakers’ season has been an unmitigated disaster, and it’s fair to say that swapping DeRozan for Westbrook could have at least helped ensure Los Angeles would’ve gotten into the play-in tournament.
Ultimately, the Lakers’ woes only seems to validate the thinking Youngmisuk sensed from DeRozan’s camp. They are a disaster of a team that has no immediate path to getting better.
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