TORONTO – When Masai Ujiri and fellow Toronto Raptors executives Jeff Weltman and Bobby Webster were driving through suburban Los Angeles waiting for the clock to strike midnight eastern time on July 1 they had a very clear objective.
Similarly, as DeMar DeRozan, his father Frank and mother Diane, his very pregnant girlfriend Kiara and his long-time agent Aaron Goodwin waited in DeRozan’s off-season home for the Raptors contingent to arrive, they had a very clear set of expectations.
“They knew exactly what they wanted to do, we knew exactly what we wanted to do,” says Goodwin, who has represented DeRozan for his entire career. “The negotiation was simply trying to find a way where each party would be completely upset with the other party if a deal didn’t get done. “
The tension was never whether the Raptors wanted to sign DeRozan – a two-time all-star at age 26 – to a five-year contract that would see him spend the prime of his career in Toronto.
And there was never any question that DeRozan, the kid from Compton who had embraced Toronto since being drafted No. 9 overall out of the University of Southern California in 2009 wanted to remain a Raptor. The pending free agent had made himself clear in his heartfelt pledge to the organization and the city after the Raptors were finally eliminated by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals.
The only concern was that something would go wrong, that something would get lost in translation.
“It just seemed like talking to DeMar he wanted to be here,” said Ujiri, the Raptors’ president. “So we just wanted to kind of find the right balance where you go to him and you’re not disrespectful but making him feel good and making him feel like he doesn’t need to talk to anyone else.”
The possibility for something getting misunderstood was in the symbolism that comes with being a “max” player in the NBA. As a seven-year veteran DeRozan was entitled to a deal worth $153 million thanks to the dramatic rise in the NBA’s television revenue kicking in for the 2016-17 season. Sometimes it’s not about the absolute dollar value of the contract but the respect signified by a franchise willing to go to the limit for a player.
But from the Raptors perspective every dollar they could save on the deal was one they could use to help build the team that could help DeRozan and fellow all-star Kyle Lowry push for an Eastern Conference title and beyond.
In the salary cap era, championship teams have often featured star players taking small discounts on deals with the savings being used to round out a roster with the kind of role players that can put a team over the top. The Raptors also had the advantage of being able to offer a fifth year, something no other team could do, but trying to leverage that hammer too much by coming in too low on an annual basis could backfire. The trick was to not take DeRozan’s loyalty for granted by offering a deal too far off the top dollar and from DeRozan’s view, appreciating what a sacrifice from him could mean to the competitiveness of the team going forward.
Enter Goodwin, who first was tweaked to DeRozan’s talent when he was tearing up the Los Angeles high school and AAU scene as a 14-year-old. Having represented some of the biggest names in the modern NBA, Goodwin was accustomed to taking franchises to the wall financially, but recognized that with DeRozan and the Raptors the circumstances were unique.
He was prepared for the arrival of the Raptors contingent, but still anxious.
“We had outlined what needed to happen with DeMar and his family; we went through all the possible scenarios because we wanted to make sure it was a good negotiation,” said Goodwin. “Sometimes these things go really bad and this being a totally unique situation with the way the cap had spiked I wanted to make sure everything was covered.”
Flash forward a few months and DeRozan’s free agency – a question that had hovered over the franchise throughout the Raptors’ record-breaking season – seems to have evolved so organically that it almost seems like it never happened.
This week DeRozan will lead the Raptors into unique territory. For the first time in franchise history they have set the bar so high coming off a 56-win season and two wins in the Eastern Conference Finals that the next steps – 60 wins? An NBA Finals appearance? – are doozies.
In the face of those challenges DeRozan suddenly seems like a true veteran. He’s outlasted his idol, Kobe Byrant. He can now tell young guns coming up what it was like to play against the likes of Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett, also retired. He’s on his second long-term contract and is now the father of two daughters, his youngest, Mari, having arrived two days after DeRozan returned from Brazil with an Olympic gold medal.
He’s going into his eighth training camp this week but his first as the player the franchise expects to be a cornerstone for the foreseeable future.
“This time around you feel like you’ve gained the ultimate experience through the years,” he said on the weekend as he made an appearance at York University at his first youth basketball camp in the Toronto area. “You know what it takes to get deep in the playoffs. You’ve been on an Olympic team. You’ve accomplished so many things, now carrying it over to your eighth year and understanding what needs to be done and putting it all into one.
“[But] it’s going to be a lot harder,” he said. “The East has gotten a lot better. A couple of teams that didn’t make the playoffs have got better. We have to be better, we have to understand what it took for us to get there and do the work to keep it going.”
It’s DeRozan’s commitment to keep pushing – he was ninth in the NBA in scoring last season at 23.5 points per game and set career marks in most major categories – that gave Ujiri the comfort to pursue what ended up being a near-max deal for the franchise’s all-time leader in wins and playoff wins.
“Every year he’s gotten better and better,” said Ujiri. “And I might sound stupid but there’s still growth there.
“You know something? Since I’ve been here in Toronto, I don’t think he’s ever been late. For anything. He’s always there. He’s a true professional. Guys like that who show loyalty and continue to grow with a team, you want them around.
“Our culture is unbelievable because of guys like him.”
In the end any anxiety about a deal falling apart because of a misunderstanding or misplaced pride about a few extra dollars here or there were unfounded. The Raptors signed DeRozan to a five-year deal worth $137.5 million, structured in such a way that it offers the Raptors about $3.5 million a year in cap room each season.
It was new ground for Goodwin, who had never compromised on a deal for a client who was eligible for a max contract before. But the circumstances with the Raptors were different and he recognized his client’s loyalty.
“Very few players get the opportunity to spend their entire career with one organization. For him to have that possibility on a high level, you can’t look away from that,” said Goodwin. “And it’s one of the better organizations. You deal with a lot of teams, you deal with a lot of owners, a lot of general managers. There’s been some consistency with the coaching and they’ve been moving to get the team better the entire time DeMar has been there and the owner has been actively participating to make sure Masai has everything he and his staff need to move forward, and I recognized all that when I spoke with DeMar. You look for those things.”
The deal went down in about 25 minutes. The Raptors executives sat with DeRozan, his family and Goodwin at the dining room table in his home in Tarzana, a comfortable suburb about an hour’s drive and a world apart from Compton. Kiara had loaded the fridge with food and drinks but no one ate – there was business to be done. The Raptors made their offer. DeRozan huddled with Goodwin and his family. They countered on a few details and almost as soon as Ujiri arrived the deal was signed. The rest of the time was spent talking about plans to move the franchise ahead as a whole. The whole thing took about an hour, during which time DeRozan instantly became richer than he ever possibly could have imagined growing up.
“It was definitely mind-blowing,” DeRozan said of the money involved, hometown discount and all. “[But] my whole focus was to play basketball and continue to get better. It was never: ‘I could get paid this much money, I could get paid that.’ The money was just to see that it was more the gratitude for the had work over all the years, seeing it pay off and having the respect of the organization, it was great.”
Not that there was any buyer’s remorse, but Ujiri said he felt even better about the deal the next day when he went to the gym at UCLA in the morning to watch some of the Raptors’ younger players work out. Just finishing his own workout, hours after signing a deal that will start at more than $25 million a season, was DeRozan dripping in sweat. A year ago Ujiri was in Los Angeles and stopped at the gym and saw the exact same scene. The deal was feeling better already.
“It’s pretty impressive,” said Ujiri. “He’s been a cool kid to be around. He’s very professional, there’s never any drama about him. He goes about his business well and now to me it seems like he’s growing up to a winner, he’s learning what it takes to win. It’s good to see.”
It turns out the Raptors and DeRozan understood each other perfectly.
