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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO - In case there was ever any doubt, DeMar DeRozan literally wears his creed with pride. It's tattooed to the side of his left hand.

Loyalty.

"I got it a while ago," said the 26-year-old guard. "I got it a long time ago. Loyalty has always been something I've lived by. Growing up, whether it was with friends, family... I always told myself... I got myself hurt a couple times early on.

"Once you get close to somebody you're willing to do any and everything for a person, but sometimes it don't come back the same way. You've got to learn that way and I learned loyalty the hard way growing up. So it means a great deal to me, especially now. The way I approach everything in life, loyalty is always the number-one factor for me."

To no surprise, it didn't take him long to prove it once free agency opened earlier this month and the long-time Raptor hit the open market for the first time in his seven-year career.

On the court DeRozan has a flair for the dramatics - he wants the ball in his hands and craves the last shot. He may not always thrive in the big moment but he never shies away from it. Off the court, he's just about as boring as professional athletes come, by his own admission. While others spend their evenings at a club, playing video games or, yes, even at the casino, the mild-mannered Compton, Calif., native can usually be found in the gym, watching cartoons with his young daughter or catching a movie at home. In other words, he's sort of a normal guy, which makes him a complete oddball by NBA standards.

When the league zigs, DeRozan zags. In an era where most players at his position launch as many three-pointers as their team will allow, he's faithful to his old-school, mid-range game. When his peers were planning their recruiting tours, looking forward to being wooed or holding court in the Hamptons, he was in his Los Angeles home, just waiting for the clock to strike midnight (or, more accurately, 9 p.m. local time).

True to character, DeRozan didn't care about the spotlight. He didn't want the added attention a long, drawn out deliberation would have brought. There was no need to even sleep on it. His decision was made long before general manager Masai Ujiri and a small Raptors contingent showed up on his doorstep that evening. Fifteen minutes into the meeting, the first and only one he took, they had an agreement in place.

"I just wanted to get it over with," DeRozan said after putting pen to paper and finally making the signing official on Thursday. "Some people like it. I had a couple friends telling me to just meet with everybody, but that's their opinion, that's not me. I know what felt right."

"He's a different kid," said Ujiri. "Even in the meeting I can't believe how calm he was, the way that he took it. It's very remarkable. It wasn't intense. Normally at that point everybody is trying to be hard and everybody is trying to be tough, but he was just calm. He sat at the table and asked very smart questions. It was good to see that."

DeRozan’s intention was always to re-up with the only NBA franchise he's ever known. Perhaps there was always some cause for skepticism. He said he wanted to stay, sure, but so did Kevin Durant. People say things. Circumstances change. People change. It's a business after all.

"It's great when you see the amount of teams out there that want you, that are interested in you, but it's nothing like something you know," DeRozan admitted. "This is a place I know. I've been through the toughest of tough times [here]. I know what to expect, I know how the organization works. In and out I just know it and I feel comfortable with it so it really wasn't a temptation."

It's not simply that DeRozan practices what he preaches, but he's doing it at a time when the name on the back of the jersey has never meant more and the name on the front of the jersey has never meant less.

It used to be that stars rarely left their teams — not as free agents, not in their prime and not even for a better shot at a ring. Karl Malone was not leaving Utah to join forces with Michael Jordan in Chicago; neither was Reggie Miller or Patrick Ewing. Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki or Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas and Hakeem Olajuwon before them — none bolted when they were at or even close to their best. When you picture those guys you see them in the jersey they wore for the bulk, or in some cases the entirety, of their careers.

Clearly this is a new NBA, a different time. Rivalries are all but dead and winning a championship seems far more important than who you win one with. Loyalty has become a hollow word.

Over the last couple weeks, Durant and Dwyane Wade, two players synonymous with the franchises that drafted them - the Oklahoma City Thunder (formally the Seattle SuperSonics) and Miami Heat - switched allegiances, with Durant forming a super team in Golden State and Wade going home to Chicago. They follow in the recent footsteps of stars like Dwight Howard, LaMarcus Aldridge and LeBron James, who have all changed uniforms in the last six years — James twice and Howard three times.

DeRozan isn't in the same class as the players listed above, to be sure. But he's a two-time all-star and an elite scorer at his position, one who would have had plenty of other suitors willing to offer a maximum contract. The Raptors, as his previous employer and owners of his Bird rights, could pay him the most and offer him a fifth year. Accepting made good business sense, but those perks — encouragement to re-sign with your own team under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement — don't seem to hold much weight around the association these days.

Ask almost any pro athlete, in any team sport, what they strive for and their list will be remarkably similar: be an all-star, make the hall of fame and - usually above all else - win a championship, or championships. Of course, those goals are consistent with DeRozan's but he has another that rarely makes the cut in this business. He wants to spend his entire career with the team that gave him his shot. He wants to be a Toronto Raptors lifer.

"It's so rare these days," DeRozan said. "When you look at the NBA, there are not too many guys that stick it out with one franchise through it all. For me, that's big. You can never take that legacy away, saying this guy played for one team. I'm working my way to doing that."

Seven of the 20 longest-tenured active NBA players that ended last season playing for their original franchise will be wearing a different jersey next fall. Like Durant and Wade, Al Horford and Joakim Noah changed addresses in free agency while Serge Ibaka, Jeff Teague and Derrick Rose were traded.

Duncan, who was at the top of that list after spending 19 seasons with the San Antonio Spurs, has decided to call it a career. The Duncan types, Nowitzki types - he's now No.  1 on the list after 18 seasons with the Dallas Mavericks - are a dying breed. DeRozan, 16th on that list at the start of the summer, could be as high as ninth on opening night when he tips off his eighth season with the Raptors.

In DeRozan, Toronto has locked up a very good, albeit imperfect player who, along with teammate and close pal Kyle Lowry, forms one of the top backcourt tandems in the league. The merits of his game are, and probably will always be open for debate. Few elicit the mixed bag of credit and criticism he does, even among his team's own fan base.

Some see the tough shot taking, high-volume scorer that doesn't shoot threes or defend consistently and is sometimes prone to tunnel vision. Others see the gifted scorer who doesn't miss games, has improved in every facet of the sport and gets to the bucket and the free-throw line at an elite rate.

Not for debate is the way in which he goes about his business. Lots of guys have gotten paid this summer and most of their salaries have raised eyebrows — that's just the reality of this new NBA economy. But few have worked as hard as DeRozan to put themselves in the position to cash in. Ujiri is confident in his investment, like Bryan Colangelo was when he gave DeRozan his first extension four years ago, because he's not just betting on the player, he's betting on the person.

DeRozan is 26 and, presumably, just reaching his prime. How good can he be? He may never be a max- salary-calibre player, but wherever his ceiling is you can bet he'll work hard enough to reach it.

DeRozan has been here so long he's not just familiar with the team's history, he carries it on his shoulders. He's heard all about the stigma that has haunted the franchise and its long-suffering fan base for over two decades: stars don't want to come to or stay in Canada.

He was coming off his rookie season when Chris Bosh walked out the door, like Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady and Damon Stoudamire before him. In the two years that followed, Toronto went 45-103. He's been a Raptor through some of the franchise's darkest days and, now, some of its brightest. Three straight division titles, its first 50-plus win season and trip to the Conference Finals. They've never been in a better place and DeRozan's fingerprints are all over it.

"Even when I think about it now, I didn't have a passport until I came here to work out [before the draft in 2009]. I had never been in snow,” DeRozan said. “I still was wearing Chuck Taylors in the wintertime. Just to look at how far I've come, it's crazy.

"My whole mindset since I've been here, my whole goal when I first got here was to make this whole city and this whole country be known. It's like we always got the short end of the stick. I always took pride and passion in wanting to change that."

In the summer of 2014, just ahead of the team's 20th NBA season, Lowry became Toronto's first star player to hit unrestricted free agency and decide to stay. One of the loudest and most influential voices in his ear at the time, DeRozan, now becomes the second.

With every record he breaks and each milestone he hits, DeRozan is sincerely humbled. In February he became the winningest player in Raptors history. Sometime next season he'll pass Jose Calderon and Morris Peterson for most games played, also jumping Bosh for the top spot on the team's all-time scoring list.

No, he's not perfect but, considering the franchise he represents — its turbulent past, its constant fight for relevance and respect, even its popular mantra "We the North" — that almost seems fitting. His rise to NBA stardom was not preordained, and neither was his new-found wealth. He worked for it, he fought for it and he's done it all in Raptors' red.

“I am Toronto," DeRozan said Thursday in a soundbite you'll hear a lot for at least another five years. "Outside of where I'm from I represent this thing harder than anybody. I've got so many goals that I want to accomplish still and I just can't wait to put that jersey back on and keep going."