DeRozan relives historic game vs Raptors, Kawhi: "fans were hooting and hollering"

As a collective, San Antonio Spurs fans are some of the most passionate, open-hearted, and consistent in the NBA. If a player comes to the Spurs and gives them all he's got, the fans will love them for it.

There's another side to that coin, however. If Spurs fans feel like they've been wronged, slighted, or betrayed, we're not above keeping a grudge, and perhaps no player knows that better than Kawhi Leonard.

Traded to the Spurs on draft day in 2011, Kawhi looked like the heir apparent to the era of the Big Three. His exceptional defense in the 2014 NBA Finals secured him his first Finals MVP trophy. All-Star games, Defensive Player of the Year awards, and MVP votes were quick to follow. The Spurs' future seemed filled with more playoff appearances and banners hung in the rafters.

When things went bad, they went bad quickly. An injury-plagued season full of teased returns, players-only meetings, meddling uncles, and rampant speculation quickly soured the relationship between fans and the player presumed to be the future of the Spurs. The breakup between Kawhi and the Spurs finally came in 2018 when Leonard was sent to Toronto in exchange for DeMar DeRozan.

DeMar was a seasoned veteran with nearly a decade of professional hoops under his belt when he came to San Antonio. He'd been to Eastern Conference Finals and All-Star games; he'd seen almost everything the league can throw at you. But as he notes in his new book Above the Noise: My Story of Chasing Calm, even he was surprised by how Spurs fans responded when Kawhi made his first return to San Antonio.

DeRozan relives Spurs victory of Raptors in Kawhi's return to San Antonio

DeRozan was tangentially familiar with how Kawhi's time in San Antonio had come to an end but admits he wasn't fully caught up. "I never bothered to get caught up in it and heard there had been an issue with his knee, and there were disagreements over treatment and rehab, and things just soured from there," he recalls.

Maybe that's all DeMar was willing to put on paper, but I bet that's not all that he heard. He shared a locker room with Kawhi's former teammates; he notes, "All my Spurs teammates who had been there during all the Kawhi drama really wanted to win." If he knew that they really wanted to win, I'm willing to bet that his teammates had caught him up on the "why" behind those strong feelings.

The drama between the franchise, the fans, Kawhi, and his former teammates came full circle in January 2019 when Kawhi and the Raptors visited San Antonio for the first time since the trade. As DeRozan remembers, it was anything but a normal regular-season game.

"As soon as we walked onto the court, it was obvious it wasn't just another game. You'd think we were entering the Colosseum for battle, the way the Spurs fans at the AT&T Center were hooting and hollering." - DeMar DeRozan

Whether you were in the arena like DeRozan or watching from home like so many other Spurs fans, you could feel that the energy in the arena was different. The raucous boo's for Leonard contrasted with full-throated cheers for DeRozan and the Spurs during player introductions set the tone for the evening.

That passion from the fans helped fuel the Spurs to a dominant win. "As a team, we felt in sync from the jump, and before I knew it, we're up by 20, and it's still the first quarter. I had 20-10-5 at halftime and finished the game with the only triple-double of my career. We crushed 'em," writes DeRozan.

Call it revenge, call it closure, call it whatever you want. After everything that went down between the Spurs and Kawhi, beating the brakes off of Leonard and the Raptors in front of a crowd of screaming Spurs fans felt damn good for everyone involved. DeMar writes as much in describing his feelings after the win: "I felt good for my Spurs teammates. I felt good for the fans, too. The San Antonio crowd was amazing. Not only do they love their team, but they really know their hoops."

DeRozan's genuine appreciation for the significance of that game and what it meant to the Spurs and their fans is one of the many reasons he should be looked at as an all-time great Spur. From the day he arrived in San Antonio, he bought into everything the organization was about, adapted his game to help the team, and made the most of every day he had here. The fans loved him for it.

That's the thing about San Antonio. It's not the flashiest market in the NBA; you're not going to be rubbing elbows with A-List celebrities at Spurs games. But if you give this city everything you have, you'll get back more than you could ever hope for.