“Toronto will always be No. 1, first of all,” DeRozan said, smiling. “But, I’ve got to put Chicago second because, mentally, of the space I was in after I got traded (to San Antonio). San Antonio helped my career so much. But, where I was with my joy mentally, I was going through so much stuff personally. “So, to kind of have a renewed ambition coming to Chicago … I remember the first meeting I had with (executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas) and (general manager) Marc (Eversley). They said, ‘Come here and just be you.’ For that to translate to me being an All-Star, to doing all the incredible things I did here, it just shows you that if you stay with something, it will repay you. It gave me a renewed ambition coming back here.”