DeMar DeRozan Talks to Bleacher Report About the NBA Lockout and Toronto Raptors

DeMar DeRozan, the emerging shooting guard for the Toronto Raptors, took the time to play in Drew Gooden's Make-A-Wish charity on Sunday night in the Bay Area and he was kind enough to take the time to talk to me.

DeRozen, who was selected ninth in the 2009 NBA draft, went through normal rookie struggles as most rookies do, but broke out in his sophomore campaign. He more than doubled his point per game average, while averaging 3.8 rebounds, 1.8 assists and a steal per game.

I asked him about his improvement from his first year to his second and he had this to say, "It came from hard work, always trying to get better. In my second season it became easier to get adjusted to the NBA, but mainly it's was by putting in more hard work on my game."

Toronto is not widely known to be a great NBA city, and the Raptors have had little success since joining the NBA. It isn’t know as a destination spot for most NBA’ers—numerous players have either played their way out of there, requested a trade and some even refused to show up (Alozono Morning). While I doubt that Toronto will be putting up a Vince Carter statue any time soon, DeRozan had nothing but great things to say about the city.

I asked DeRozan how he felt about playing in Toronto and what he thought of the fanbase. He responded: "I love Toronto, it's a great city to play basketball. The fans are great, they are very supportive, it's just really a great place to play basketball."

While he may love playing in Toronto, the reality is that he has lost more games in his first two years there than he has probably lost in his entire life.

I asked him how he deals with the losing and how he continues to get better, despite the team's lack of success.

DeRozan said, "I just have to keep my head up, losing hurts. But we (the Raptors) just have to keep our head up and continue to word hard and hopefully things will get better."

This NBA lockout continues to weigh on everybody, especially the players, by now they should be playing in front of 19,000 fans plus, and numerous television cameras. Instead, on a Sunday night in November they were playing in front of 3,800 (maybe) and not one television camera, and actually in a gym with no heater either, as DeRozan said: "It's freezing in here."

Kind of like the relationship between the owners on players right now, I asked him as one of the younger players in the NBA, how involved is he with the labor negotiations?

"I'm trying to learn as much as I can," DeRozan said. "This is all very important not only now, but for everyone 10-15 years down the road, it's important to get this thing right."

I then asked, "So do you feel like Billy Hunter and Derek Fisher are making the right decisions for the player's union?"

DeRozan answered, "I have faith that Billy Hunter and Derek are making the right decisions for our circumstance, but all we can really do is trust that they are making the right decisions and that things will work out for everybody."

As we are all ready to see a real NBA game soon, I asked him what he would want to say to the fans who just want to see basketball again, he said, "Just be patient, we all just want to play too, nothing we can do, but wait."

I guess that's all we can do.