Chicago Bulls star DeMar DeRozan revealed his daughter received online threats during the NBA Play-In tournament.
Nine-year-old child Diar emerged as one of the biggest talking points from the win over the Toronto Raptors that kept their post-season alive game she was screaming during each of the Canadian team's free throws on Thursday night.
It contributed to the Bulls’ comeback 109-105 victory to progress to the battle for the eighth seed with the Miami Heat as the Raptors put up the most misses in an NBA elimination game, shooting just 50% from the free throw line (18-for-36).
Following their defeat to Miami on Friday, which brought their season to an end, DeRozan spoke on some vile comments aimed at his daughter following her actions at the Scotiabank Arena. Furthermore, due to the threats, as a precautionary measure Diar was led by security and her father to the Bulls team bus post-game.
"I was with her. I guarantee you nothing would ever happen when I'm with my daughter," DeRozan said after defeat in South Florida. "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.
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“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." He added: "It's crazy. No matter how good something could be, you still got miserable people that just don't have a life, honestly. It's sad. All I care about is my daughter enjoying her moment.”
Diar did not attend the game at the FTX Arena, as DeRozan said she needs to “go back to school” after she was allowed to miss a day to watch him play the Raptors, his former team. He also revealed she had a basketball game of her own.
"She's still a child, you know what I mean," DeRozan said. "I don't let her get caught up in the outside fix of it. She just came there for one reason and one reason only and that was to support her dad. She had the most fun with it. For me, I wanted to protect that moment for her. I never would have thought it would go to that extreme that it did. But, you know, it did. Maybe later down the line when she gets older, she will look back at it and realise what really happened."
DeRozan's Bulls side missed out on a place in the playoffs after losing to the Miami Heat in the Play-In tournament (Bryan Cereijo/Getty Images)DeRozan scored 26 points, nine assists and four rebounds but was unable to lead his team to victory over Heat who went on a scintillating run in the final few minutes of the fourth quarter, booking a date with the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the Play-Offs.
“This one hurts. I ain’t gonna lie. It’s a (expletive) feeling right now. It sucks. It shouldn’t have ended like that,” DeRozan said.
“We gave ourself an opportunity to win the game. We were up. We can’t make the mistakes that we made. Now we’re sitting in our reality with nothing to do.”
Chicago native and former Bulls player Max Strus came back to haunt his city and ex-team as he scored 31 points to help the Heat keep their season going. Star man Jimmy Butler also registered 31 points along with three assists and five rebounds.
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