On Friday, April 18, DeMar DeRozan, a 6-time NBA All-Star and current small forward for the Sacramento Kings, was involved in a physical altercation with a man at Yume Sushi in Calabasas, California. In a recorded video shared by TMZ, DeRozan can be seen pinning the man to the ground as a woman tries to push DeRozan away from the altercation, letting him know that it isn’t worth it.
According to People, eyewitnesses said that the altercation allegedly started when the man approached DeRozan while he was sitting at a table and shoved a brightly lit phone in his face while recording. The NBA player then hit the phone out of the man’s hand.
In the video, once the man returns to his feet, he can be heard demanding his phone, so it’s possible DeRozan or someone else then picked up the phone and refused to return it. Either way, the police were called and while there is no record of any charges being filed against either DeRozan or the unnamed man, the police did confirm that an investigation is ongoing.
DeRozan’s season with the Sacramento Kings recently ended as they were ousted from the NBA playoffs by the Dallas Mavericks in the 9-seed versus 10-seed play-in game. DeRozan, who is from Compton, became a focal point of the ongoing feud between Kendrick Lamar and Drake in the summer of 2024. DeRozan and Lamar are friends, but he and Drake became friends during the NBA All-Star’s decade as a member of the Toronto Raptors, where DeRozan was the number nine draft pick out of the University of Southern California in 2009.
In response to DeRozan allegedly taking Lamar’s side in the beef—even appearing in Lamar’s Billboard chart-topper “Not Like Us”—Drake made reference to pulling DeRozan’s jersey from the rafters if the Raptors were ever to retire his jersey.
