Toronto Raptors guard DeMar DeRozan looks up to Kobe Bryant the way he looked up to Michael Jordan.

DeRozan doesn't have any of the same accomplishments as his NBA predecessors, but the LA county native (from Compton) wants to model himself after them.

He spoke with ESPN's Briant Windhorst about how carefully he studied Bryant's game.

“I'd watched him growing up. I watched Kobe do everything. His shot. His footwork. How he works in the post. Everything growing up was Kobe. I tried to emulate the tough shots he took, his pump fake.”

“There's nothing you can show me that Kobe has done on a court that I don't know about or have tried. I practice almost all of them.”

Having a similar body type and athletic skill-set, DeRozan has copied Bryant's moves from his footwork to his mid-range fadeaway jump shots. In fact, DeRozan had the pleasure of getting advice and looked at Bryant as a mentor since his teenage days.

“After we met, then he sort of watched me grow up. And he was always offering advice. He was always serious. That's one of the things I loved about him, his seriousness.”

There are no championships under DeRozan's name but the wisdom didn't go to waste when looking at numbers from DeRozan's past couple of years to Bryant's career.

STATISTICDEROZAN (2015-2017)BRYANT (CAREER)
PPG24.425.0
RPG4.65.2
APG4.14.7
FG%45.444.7
3PT%32.632.9

The stats are so similar that it's almost unbelievable.