DeRozan’s 9-year-old daughter received threats in Toronto
Diar DeRozan had to be escorted to the Chicago Bulls team bus for team safety. She rose to stardom for her yelling during Raptors free throws.
In the end, the Chicago Bulls didn’t make it to the NBA playoffs. The Illinois franchise fell 102-91 in the second and final game of the play in in Miami against the Heat. A key confrontation in which they were without their secret weapon: Diar DeRozan.
Team talisman
Diar, DeMar DeRozan’s nine-year-old daughter, rose to fame in the victory against the Toronto Raptors for her screams whenever her father’s former team took a free throw. It certainly seemed to do the trick - Toronto closed the game with a dismal 18 from 36 from the free-throw line. A 50% success rate far removed from the 78.4% which they averaged during the regular season of the NBA.
“Man, I’ve just seen it, she went viral. She... I haven’t let it soak in yet. Everyone kept saying... I kept hearing something during the game, there was one free throw, somebody missed, I looked back and I was like, ‘Damn, that’s my daughter screaming!’,” the guard told reporters at the post-game press conference.
DeRozan explained that his daughter had pestered him to take her along to the Scotiabank Arena where she had cheered her dad on when she was a little girl, before he left for Chicago in 2018. “It’s crazy, my daughter called me the other day when she was getting out of school. And she just said, ‘Dad, can I come to the Toronto game?’ I remember her going to all the Toronto games when she was a kid and I almost said no because she’s in school back home. She was just adamant, she kept asking about coming along to support and I said, ‘Ah, you can miss one day at school to come to a game’. I’m glad I did. I owe her some money, for sure”.
Diar could not go to the Kaseya Center in Florida for Friday’s game against the Heat because he had school. An overwhelming reason that from Chicago they tried to get around: United Center, the airline, offered to pay the plane ticket for the Bulls star’s daughter to attend.
A funny story that had its dark side. As reported by TNT’s Chris Hayes, security for the Illinois franchise had to escort Diar to the team bus after the NBA reported that the girl had received dangerous threats online.
“I was with her. I guarantee you nothing would ever happen when I’m with my daughter,” DeRozan said after the Friday after losing to the Heat. “It’s just idiotic people at the end of the day. Obviously, it’s frustrating when you hear any type of threats. You don’t try to take anything lightly. My thing is my daughter don’t know nothing about it. She just know the good side of we won the game. As long as she’s happy with that, I’m not worried about nothing else.”
DeRozan also referred to the toxicity of social media in general: “It’s crazy. It’s just the world that we live in. No matter how good something could be, you still got just miserable people out there that don’t have a life, honestly. It’s sad. We see it every single day. More than anything, all I care about is my daughter enjoying her moment, her time. Keep that within our circle. I don’t get her caught up in all the negative stuff that comes on the outside. That’s just me being a protector as a father. Me knowing what it’s like on the other end of being famous and everything, it’s just sad. Some people sit up and use their fingers to make any type of idle threats. It’s miserable,” he concluded.