Chicago Bulls forward DeMar DeRozan is seven points away from history.

Since making his debut for the Toronto Raptors on October 28th, 2009, in a 10-point win over Shaquille O'Neal and the Cleveland Cavaliers – seriously – DeRozan has appeared in 962 regular season games with 950 starts for the Raptors, San Antonio Spurs, and Chicago Bulls, with 63 more playoff appearances rounding out his career so far. He's averaged 20.8 points, 4.4 rebounds, and 1.0 steals per game over his 14-year professional career, made it to the All-Star game on five occasions, and even made it onto three All-NBA teams, on the third-team in 2017, and on the second team in 2018 and 2022.

Certainly, as his career continues on and his profile has elevated considerably since arriving in Chicago, DeRozan's career has reached previously unimaginable heights from when he was one of the NBA's best-kept secrets in Toronto, but soon, those efforts will be chiseled into the annals of NBA history forever, as the prolific scorer is expected to become just the 50th player in the association's history to score 20,000 points, as he's just seven points away from the mark heading into a contest against his former San Antonio Spurs.

Naturally, DeRozan would be wrapped up in the moment and excited to all but certainly pass over the threshold, right? Not necessarily; while the moment's gravitas isn't lost on the USC product, his mind is largely on his mentor, the affable Kobe Bryant.

DeMar DeRozan maintains a Mamba Mentality ahead of his historic milestone.

Asked if he ever thinks about what his friend and mentor, Bryant, would think of him now by The Athletic's Darnell Mayberry, DeRozan reflected on the Black Mamba.

“Man, I do think about that a lot,” DeRozan told The Athletic. “From your idols, you always wanted that stamp to solidify yourself. Whatever it was. If it was a move, if it was a play, if it was a game-winner. If it was any small thing like that, you always want (validation).”

“The same with my dad. I used to do that with my dad. My dad would always be hard on me. He wouldn’t say great job. He would critique me even more. But that would let me know I’m doing something right. And that was the same way with Kob (sic), like, ‘All right, you did that. Now what?’ That’s that constant motivation that you always go toward, to somebody you looked up to in order to find the hunger to just keep going.”

Often compared to Bryant early on in his professional career due to his similar offensive game, DeRozan credits the career-long Laker with sparking his imagination as both a scorer and basketball player as a whole.

“My imagination and my foundation started from Kobe,” DeRozan said. “Just watching him give me that imagination as a kid to want to shoot a fadeaway. To want to learn to pull up. To want to rock a ’fro. It started from that. That was my skeleton of a basketball player I wanted to be and things I wanted to do. Without Kobe, I wouldn’t have that imagination.”

Assuming he plays up to his usual standard when the Bulls take the court against the Spurs on Friday night, DeRozan will become just the 50th players in NBA history to reach the 20,000-point mark, and it's safe to say at least some of that glory will belong to Bryant, too.

The Chicago Bulls forward refused to rely solely on his athleticism.

Elsewhere in his interview with Mayberry, DeRozan discussed how he entered the NBA as an athletic scorer capable of ripping off eye-popping jams but refused to let his offensive game become one-dimensional, especially since players rarely retain that explosiveness into their 30s – Vince Carter excluded.

“I was just an athlete,” DeRozan said. “I relied on so much of my athletic ability. I always wanted to dunk, get out in transition, do all the dunks before practice, after practice. And the more and more I became a fan of the game and wanting to add different elements to my game to be just a complete player and do all the things I’ve seen all my favorite players do, that’s what it’s always about for me.”

“I always had a lot of older people that I looked up to that knew the game that always spoke about the game in different facets. I used to always be curious when they talked about certain players who weren’t athletic, how they were able to do certain things. And I always used to look at it, like, ‘What if I couldn’t jump as high?’ And they would break it down for you. ‘Well, that’s why you need to learn this. Learn this. Learn this. You’ve got to rely on this.’ And that started at an early age to where I just wanted to create different elements into my game instead of just being a jumper or dunker.”

Now tasked with filling the role of a dynamic do-it-all offensive scorer and the Chicago Bulls' fourth-quarter closer, it's clear DeRozan's hard work has paid off.