IT'S AN INSUFFERABLY hot day in early August, and Billy Donovan and the Chicago Bulls' coaching staff are gathered in Las Vegas for NBA summer league. Just a few days prior, the team had signed 31-year-old DeMar DeRozan to a three-year, $85 million contract, and the four-time All-Star had made the trip to join the team from his home in Southern California.
Donovan, whose Bulls had finished 11th in the East behind a 19th-ranked offense and an 11th-ranked defense, had questions -- and he wanted his new star guard to help answer them.
With the Bulls' brain trust -- Donovan, executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley -- DeRozan rides over to UNLV's Thomas and Mack Center from the team's hotel on the Strip, the Waldorf Astoria. The previous night, the foursome had dined together at the Aria Hotel, in what was effectively a first date.
They'd spoken about DeRozan's life in the league and his plans to look at homes in Chicago. It was a pleasant evening. New NBA relationships are always pleasant in August.
Donovan and his staff had spent the last week engaged in an advanced course in DeMarology. They'd studied film from his time in Toronto and San Antonio. They'd made note of how and where and when their ball-dominant guard had received the ball in the half court.
Armed with these first impressions, and beneath the sounds of squeaky sneakers in the small gym at UNLV, Donovan and DeRozan have their first discussion of their respective basketball philosophies.
DeRozan tells Donovan that he's cognizant of his reputation as primarily a midrange, isolation player, but he feels this perception is unfair. He says he loves to survey the half court from the middle of the floor and find teammates -- something that became a staple of his game in San Antonio. Donovan tells DeRozan that he wants the team to run and push the pace, in order to maximize fellow newcomer Lonzo Ball and Zach LaVine.
Two basketball lifers who'd found success in different ways pledge to find a mutual vision that would help lead the Bulls to their first playoff series win since 2015.
"I told him I was open to anything he wanted to put out there," DeRozan says now.
"It was an unbelievable conversation," Donovan says. "He's a basketball savant."
Energized by the talk, Donovan gathers the coaching staff back at the hotel. For the rest of the week, in a suite with a whiteboard and a large video screen, coaches take turns scribbling sets that address their offensive priorities: How can we get Nikola Vucevic involved in as many actions as possible? How can we speed up the game for Ball while still honoring DeRozan's more meticulous style? How can we find efficient ways for LaVine to score?
Most of all: How can we devise a system that emphasizes speed and the kind of movement that feeds energy to an offense with DeMar DeRozan, a player who built an All-Star career rarely doing either one?