NBA Rumors: Philadelphia 76ers Aiming At DeMar DeRozan

Toronto Raptor DeMar DeRozan is the North Star, and right now, NBA Rumors suggest the Philadelphia 76ers are pointing North

He is DeMar DeRozan, arguably the best player for a very good team north of the border, the Toronto Raptors.  In fact, he is one of the best players in the NBA today, and he’s about to enter free agency.

South of Toronto sits Bryan Colangelo, the new President of Basketball Operations for the Philadelphia 76ers.   His hiring was the result of some NBA intervention, and the helpful hand of his father, Jerry Colangelo.  At the time, reactions were mixed, even polarizing.  But one man had a reaction that became very public and very supportive.

And why not? After all, it was Bryan Colangelo who drafted the 6-foot-7 220 pound shooting guard from the University of Southern California with the ninth pick of the 2009 NBA draft.

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He joined a Toronto Raptors team on the decline.  In fact, the team slid from a 40 win season his rookie year to a 20 win season the following year and to a 23 win season the next year.  But DeMar DeRozan never stopped believing in himself, or in the man who brought him to the NBA.

Bryan Colangelo went out on a limb and offered DeRozan a four-year contract extension worth $38 million.  It was a bold move at the time, and so controversial that Toronto Raptors president and GM Bryan Colangelo held a press conference the following day explain a decision that — from the outside — felt premature.

"“We weren’t talking a lot about it publicly. We were discussing a lot of things with (DeRozan’s) representation team over the last month or so. I told you probably at the start of the summer that we were going to address it at the proper time. As the process unfolded, clearly a lot of activity happened (near Wednesday’s deadline). A lot of deals that weren’t expected happened at the last minute, including Taj Gibson (with Chicago) seven minutes before the deadline. It’s not really a surprise to us based on some of the progress that we were making throughout the process.” – Bryan Colangelo"

Bryan Colangelo made DeMar DeRozan a well paid player in the NBA, and took some heat over it. That did not go unnoticed by the shooting guard.

When Colangelo’s name came up as a possible sucessor for the general manager position for the Brooklyn Nets earlier in the year, DeRozan campaigned hard for his former boss to land the position.

That’s the type of loyalty we’re talking about.  Now, the tables have turned. Now it’s DeMar DeRozan who has the say of where and for how long he plays with his next team.   He is very much part of the Toronto Raptors plans, and there were initial reports that DeRozan would only meet with the Raptors.

So the issue was a moot point.  But the winds of free agency are fierce and every changing:

And so… DeMar DeRozan to the Philadelphia 76ers is very much a possibility at this point.  But does he make sense for the Philadelphia 76ers?  With a roster settling in on the front court, the team needs a shooting guard, a veteran, and a player who can shoot from the perimeter.  DeRozan is a seven year veteran, an excellent shooting guard who averaged 23.6 points per game last year, and has a lukewarm perimeter shot (which came in at a career high 33.8 percent accuracy last year).

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But he does so much more.   He rebounds, tosses assists, and can pick the pockets of the opposing player as well.  He is the two-way player Brett Brown covets, but will not need to develop.

We know that the Philadelphia 76ers will be very interested in DeMar DeRozan.  Will that interest be reciprocated?  This will be the first test of Bryan Colangelo’s ties to the NBA.  Let’s hope he passes it with flying colors.