Who Taught DeMar DeRozan the Pump Fake?
It wasn’t 8 or 24.
If you’ve watched DeMar DeRozan play, you’ve probably noticed that he likes to do a certain thing called the pump fake.
He’ll fake a shot before shooting to get his defender to contest the shot or to jump so that he can get an opening or draw a foul.
And he gets his defender to bite pretty much every single time because he’s a master at it.
For example, when he was with the San Antonio Spurs back in 2019 and his team visited the New York Knicks, there was this one play where he used a screen and a center (Mitchell Robinson) had to switch onto him.
DeRozan knew that it was going to be difficult to get a clean shot on Robinson, who’s 7-0 and a skilled defender.
So, he went to his most reliable move. He pump-faked to get the center to leave the floor.
Robinson bit on the first pump and all DeRozan had to do from there was go through the motions of making the shot through the contact for an And-1.
When I first noticed DeRozan pump faking, I immediately thought he learned the move from his friend and mentor, Kobe Bryant.
Kobe was notorious for getting defenders to fall for his pump fakes and was a master at it.
But apparently, DeRozan didn’t.
On an episode of Podcast P, DeRozan said he learned the pump fake in his teens from an NBA legend.
“A guy who taught me the pump fake was Sam Cassell,” DeRozan said. “15, 16 years old. Man, he used to play for the Clippers when I was young. My uncle’s real close with Sam Cassell, so he used to always take me over to his house and he used -all you know how Sam is, he just loud. So, he used to talk about how to do certain moves. And he always used to break down the pump fake to me. It’s like, ‘Man, you get to the spot, you know, you hit a motherf—ker with this, you hit it again, they don’t jump, then you shoot over them.”
DeRozan said at first, he didn’t believe Cassell. But then he watched highlights of the 1-time All-Star and realized that shot fakes are effective.
“I used to watch film of him and I’m like, ‘This sh-t really works.’ And it just always used to really stick with me. But Sam the one that put it in my head. I was 15 years old, 16 years old. I didn’t know later down the line I’d stick with it so much but it put me back in spot to where, like, if I get fouled using this or if I hit two shots in a row, I know you gonna jump the next time, you know what I mean? I start playing with it from that perspective.”
As a result of mastering this move, DeRozan climbed the All-Time Points list and is currently sitting at the 25th spot with 25,292 points.
He also averaged 22.2 points per game on 47.7 percent shooting last season, at 35 years old.
So, let’s just say the pump fake is doing good things for him.
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