DeMar DeRozan says he was ‘too tired’ to go for 40 in blowout win over Lakers

DeMar DeRozan was too tired to pad his scoring stats against the LeBron-less Lakers.

DeMar DeRozan scored a game-high 38 points in the Bulls’ 121-103 win against the Lakers on Monday but apparently was ‘too tired’ to go for 40 like his teammate, Zach Lavine, wanted him to.

“[Lavine] was trying to force me to get 40 tonight and I told him I was tired,” said DeRozan according to Bulls Insider, K.C. Johnson, on Twitter.

The Lakers were without Lebron James who is out due to injury and were without Anthony Davis for the fourth quarter after he was ejected for telling the referee his shoe wasn’t on. That’s real.

The game was already a blowout at that point though, as the Bulls shot 44.1 percent on 3-pointers and DeRozan finished an efficient 15-of-23 from the field.

DeMar DeRozan is in the midst of a career resurgence

DeRozan is having a career year in his return to the Eastern Conference after three years in San Antonio. His 26.9 points per game are the second-most of his career and his 37.1 percent on 3-pointers is by far the best for the career 28.3 percent 3-point shooter.

He has likely benefited from the spacing that comes with playing on the fourth-best 3-point shooting team in the league (36.9 percent). Fellow Chicago Bulls newcomer, Lonzo Ball, has also seen a similar increase in his 3-point percentage, shooting 44.4 percent this year despite being 35.9 percent for his career.