DeMar DeRozan believes he would have won a championship with the Raptors if the Kawhi Leonard trade never happened
September 11, 2024
I love DeMar, but I don’t know man…
31 comments
Not a chance, but I love the confidence
Steven A-hole. It was a loaded question. Poor Demar, the whole thing has to still hurt.
Nope. We won’t even get past Philly.
If you plug in DeMar into the 2019 playoff raptors instead of Kawhi, the team is still a contender, but I don’t see DeMar carrying us on his back against Philly like Kawhi did, or guarding Giannis like Kawhi did.
Without Kawhi and Marc Gasol that team probably loses to Philly. DeMar and JV were great Raptors but they weren’t at that level.
I’m buying it if in 2017 they were somehow able to get like 3 years younger Gasol and 3 years older Siakam, OG and Fred.
Demar gets a lot of flack when that era’s roster had some problems that allowed opposing teams to put tons of pressure on him.
He’s a great player with limitations, and those rosters were a couple players short of true contending
We’d be done in the 2nd round vs Philly.
Kawhi shot 53% from the field, averaged 34.7PPG, 9.9RPG, 4APG in that series.
You’re not getting anywhere close to that production from DeRozan. Other than that Cavs series in 2016 he never even shot above 44% in his time here in any series and our teams went 4-11 in 2nd round matchups in his time here.
Even Lowry, while it’s all forgotten about because we won, fans weren’t exactly fully satisfied with having him as our PG going in to that season either.
Imagine Demar telling Nick Nurse in the ECF “I’m guarding Gianni’s”
In addition to Kawhi, Raps would have been missing Danny Green. Retaining Jacob Peoltl at the time would have been irrelevant. So if you want a comparison, you need to subtract Kawhi and Green, then add DeMar.
So you lose two lock down defenders.
How do you get past Philadelphia, let alone Milwaukee, without them?
And the Warriors would have eaten them alive.
DeMar is awesome but the trade was such a haul for Toronto, it isn’t fair to compare what would have been with what was.
I get the confidence given they were on the back of being #1 in the East, but the team wasn’t built for playoff success without the defence.
What’s he suppose to say? No?
Ppl need to stop asking him this.. it’s been 5 years.
Lastly, raps get smoked by Philly if we had demar over kawhi.
Raptors probably go 6-7 games with Orlando with Demar and get swept by 76ers in the 2nd round. Looking at previous led demar teams it took them 6-7 games to beat Mediocre teams like 2016 pacers and heat, 2017 bucks, 2018 wizards.
Not a fucking chance. Kawhi was the best player in the NBA on both sides of the court in the 2019 Playoffs.
I think if we keep DeMar and don’t get Kawhi but keep every other move the same (still acquire Gasol etc.) then we lose in 2019 to Philly. Might even lose to the Bucks in the previous round.
The actual interesting discussion is what happens the following year in 2020. We lost Kawhi and still went 53-19 for 2nd in the conference. We took the Celtics to 7 who were then gassed and went on to lose to the Heat in 6 with 3 of the 4 losses being by less than 5 points. I think if you take that 2020 team and just plug DeMar in there’s a real chance at a finals run – ESPECIALLY if you could somehow plug that first Chicago year of DeMar in where he finished top 10 in MVP voting (now I’m getting too hypothetical).
But ya I genuinely think our cast of role players and depth on that squad would be enough if you plugged Derozan in to at least make the finals and have one more crack at Lebron.
He’s got that book tour energy flowing.
Every series before the trade went 6 or 7 games
id believe that too if I was one of the 500 players in the world that makes it to the NBA. You need that kind of irrational confidence
Kawhi had to do some heroic stuff to win the Chip. I love Demar, but the dude has never even come closed to Kawhi’s peak…
Yeah, naw man. Love the guy and wish he was still in a Raptors uniform but lets be real. That team was rock solid, but there was still times Kawhi had to go into beast mode amd absolutely dominate to push this team over the top. DeMar hasn’t been able to do that on any team he played for.
As my old buddy Lane used to say, like my asshole I can’t quite see it.
Not happening
Sure bud
lol
Kawhi did some things in the playoffs that DD wasn’t able to do and still needed a lot of luck on top of it.
We would still be a solid team, but Kawhi was the man that gave us that little extra to get over Philly and the Bucks. Without him we would have probably lost in 7 to Philly.
I think it’s forgotten a lot that DeRozan spent 5 years here being the biggest playoff choker of all time by like every possible measure
Why is this topic still being brought up…
Love you DeMar but you’re delusional
Pretty insane take from him considering kawhi was basically an incarnation of MJ for us
I love DeMar but he DeWrong on this.
I’m so sorry, but you could see the difference in literally the second game of that season (Kawhi and Danny’s double block vs Boston). You cannot convince me we would’ve won without Kawhi and Danny’s defense.
31 comments
Not a chance, but I love the confidence
Steven A-hole. It was a loaded question. Poor Demar, the whole thing has to still hurt.
Nope. We won’t even get past Philly.
If you plug in DeMar into the 2019 playoff raptors instead of Kawhi, the team is still a contender, but I don’t see DeMar carrying us on his back against Philly like Kawhi did, or guarding Giannis like Kawhi did.
Without Kawhi and Marc Gasol that team probably loses to Philly. DeMar and JV were great Raptors but they weren’t at that level.
I’m buying it if in 2017 they were somehow able to get like 3 years younger Gasol and 3 years older Siakam, OG and Fred.
Demar gets a lot of flack when that era’s roster had some problems that allowed opposing teams to put tons of pressure on him.
He’s a great player with limitations, and those rosters were a couple players short of true contending
We’d be done in the 2nd round vs Philly.
Kawhi shot 53% from the field, averaged 34.7PPG, 9.9RPG, 4APG in that series.
You’re not getting anywhere close to that production from DeRozan. Other than that Cavs series in 2016 he never even shot above 44% in his time here in any series and our teams went 4-11 in 2nd round matchups in his time here.
Even Lowry, while it’s all forgotten about because we won, fans weren’t exactly fully satisfied with having him as our PG going in to that season either.
Imagine Demar telling Nick Nurse in the ECF “I’m guarding Gianni’s”
In addition to Kawhi, Raps would have been missing Danny Green. Retaining Jacob Peoltl at the time would have been irrelevant. So if you want a comparison, you need to subtract Kawhi and Green, then add DeMar.
So you lose two lock down defenders.
How do you get past Philadelphia, let alone Milwaukee, without them?
And the Warriors would have eaten them alive.
DeMar is awesome but the trade was such a haul for Toronto, it isn’t fair to compare what would have been with what was.
I get the confidence given they were on the back of being #1 in the East, but the team wasn’t built for playoff success without the defence.
What’s he suppose to say? No?
Ppl need to stop asking him this.. it’s been 5 years.
Lastly, raps get smoked by Philly if we had demar over kawhi.
Raptors probably go 6-7 games with Orlando with Demar and get swept by 76ers in the 2nd round. Looking at previous led demar teams it took them 6-7 games to beat Mediocre teams like 2016 pacers and heat, 2017 bucks, 2018 wizards.
Not a fucking chance. Kawhi was the best player in the NBA on both sides of the court in the 2019 Playoffs.
I think if we keep DeMar and don’t get Kawhi but keep every other move the same (still acquire Gasol etc.) then we lose in 2019 to Philly. Might even lose to the Bucks in the previous round.
The actual interesting discussion is what happens the following year in 2020. We lost Kawhi and still went 53-19 for 2nd in the conference. We took the Celtics to 7 who were then gassed and went on to lose to the Heat in 6 with 3 of the 4 losses being by less than 5 points. I think if you take that 2020 team and just plug DeMar in there’s a real chance at a finals run – ESPECIALLY if you could somehow plug that first Chicago year of DeMar in where he finished top 10 in MVP voting (now I’m getting too hypothetical).
But ya I genuinely think our cast of role players and depth on that squad would be enough if you plugged Derozan in to at least make the finals and have one more crack at Lebron.
He’s got that book tour energy flowing.
Every series before the trade went 6 or 7 games
id believe that too if I was one of the 500 players in the world that makes it to the NBA. You need that kind of irrational confidence
Kawhi had to do some heroic stuff to win the Chip. I love Demar, but the dude has never even come closed to Kawhi’s peak…
Yeah, naw man. Love the guy and wish he was still in a Raptors uniform but lets be real. That team was rock solid, but there was still times Kawhi had to go into beast mode amd absolutely dominate to push this team over the top. DeMar hasn’t been able to do that on any team he played for.
As my old buddy Lane used to say, like my asshole I can’t quite see it.
Not happening
Sure bud
lol
Kawhi did some things in the playoffs that DD wasn’t able to do and still needed a lot of luck on top of it.
We would still be a solid team, but Kawhi was the man that gave us that little extra to get over Philly and the Bucks. Without him we would have probably lost in 7 to Philly.
I think it’s forgotten a lot that DeRozan spent 5 years here being the biggest playoff choker of all time by like every possible measure
Why is this topic still being brought up…
Love you DeMar but you’re delusional
Pretty insane take from him considering kawhi was basically an incarnation of MJ for us
I love DeMar but he DeWrong on this.
I’m so sorry, but you could see the difference in literally the second game of that season (Kawhi and Danny’s double block vs Boston). You cannot convince me we would’ve won without Kawhi and Danny’s defense.