At the end of a mid-December practice last season, the five highest-ranking members of Toronto's brain trust called DeMar DeRozan into the office of Masai Ujiri, Toronto's president of basketball operations, for something of an intervention.
"I didn't know what the hell was going on," DeRozan told ESPN a few months later. "I thought, 'S---, I know I can't be traded.' It was like I was being called into the principal's office."
Ujiri told DeRozan he could be Toronto's Kobe Bryant -- a lifetime superstar carrying his team toward title contention -- if he cleared the last hurdle in his game: shooting more 3s.