For DeMar DeRozan, this path toward improved mental health started with writing a tweet.
It led to him writing a book.
Being in Sacramento isn’t the only new part of DeRozan’s story entering this NBA season. The six-time All-Star is now an author, after his book “Above the Noise: My Story of Chasing Calm” was released in the offseason. It’s a continuation of the conversation he helped start six years ago when he revealed that he struggled with his mental health.
“I never would have thought I’d have did a book ever in my life,” DeRozan said last month at media day with the Kings, the club he joined in the offseason after spending the last three seasons in Chicago. “To do that, it was something new. Once I got past those jitters and you start to get, you know, the reception from the book and it was like, ‘Damn, you liked it?’ It was good. I was happy.”
And happiness is the destination.
DeRozan hasn’t stopped sharing about his mental health journey in the 6 1/2 years since posting that initial tweet; fellow NBA veteran Kevin Love of the Miami Heat has also been a champion in that same space of trying to help others by revealing his own struggles.
It is no longer a secret topic, no longer unspoken, no longer scary and no longer a sign of weakness — not just around the NBA, but around most every level of sports, pro and amateur, men’s and women’s, team and individual.
“When you look at yourself in the mirror, sometimes you don’t like what you see, and that could lead to some depression or lead to some anxiety or lead to other mental health issues,” Dallas guard Kyrie Irving said during last season’s NBA Finals. “That’s a big thing that I think our generation is spearheading, where I hope that the older generation can take a lesson out of our book, that this isn’t just some spiritual ’70s type of mantras we are trying to put out here. We actually believe in what we talk about in terms of meditation and having the ability to slow your life down and making sure that you keep your priorities straight.”
Irving and Love were two players that DeRozan picked out in the book as examples of those who expressed concern after the initial tweet in February 2018 at All-Star weekend. DeRozan’s agent, Aaron Goodwin, told him — in a story detailed in the book — that even the NBA office reached out to check on what the tweet meant.
Goodwin tried to prep DeRozan that the tweet could be the talk of All-Star weekend and that questions were likely coming.
“The way I saw it, all I had done was shared an honest moment — the kind of thing countless people are feeling on any given day,” DeRozan wrote in the book. “Neither of us realized it at the time, but it was a perspective that hadn’t been expressed by an athlete at my level on that kind of platform.”
Love and Irving had taken notice, and they asked DeRozan how he was feeling when they gathered for All-Star weekend duties. DeRozan was autographing items at the time, acting unbothered by anything. But the tweet had most certainly gotten their attention.
“I wrote my tweet during a moment of vulnerability and transparency. But that moment had passed,” DeRozan wrote. “Now I was on the job, so to speak, doing my duty. So I went back to being myself, suppressing my true feelings and sweeping it all under the rug. Deep down, their worry meant a lot to me.”
The author is still a player, of course. DeRozan averaged 24 points per game last season in Chicago, and even at 35 and going into his 16th NBA season — with previous stops in San Antonio and Toronto — the Kings believe he can help them make a serious jump in the Western Conference.
Sacramento landed him this summer on a three-year, $74 million deal.
“When you’ve got a guy like DeMar walking through that door,” Kings coach Mike Brown said, “it adds to the belief of everybody.”
