Compton Native DeMar DeRozan is the NBA's Next Superstar

Halfway through the first quarter of Monday's NBA basketball game at Staples Center, DeMar DeRozan found himself isolated just inside the key with one of the best defenders in the NBA glued to his hip.

The Toronto Raptors guard calmly dribbled to his right, disguised a drive, stopped, faked left, faked right and then shot a fadeaway jumper over Los Angeles Clippers forward Luc Mbah a Moute. Swish. Nothing but net.

This is the NBA's next superstar, and he's coming to an arena near you.

The fact that the Raptors would ultimately lose the game, 123-115, to the team with the NBA's best record is beside the point. It's the ascension of an average NBA player into one of basketball's best that has the league buzzing.

DeRozan was born in our own backyard, straight outta the city of Compton. He attended Compton High School and was the No. 6 recruit in the country according to Scout.com in 2008.

To the surprise of many, DeRozan forgo scholarships from Arizona State and North Carolina, instead choosing to stay close to home and attend the University of Southern California.

DeRozan did the "one and done" thing and left USC for the NBA where he was taken ninth overall by the Raptors in the 2009 NBA Draft. Hasheem Thabeet, Tyreke Evans, Ricky Rubio, Johnny Flynn and Jordan Hill were all taken over him.

Since then, DeRozan has slowly grown into an elite scorer, improving on his point per game (PPG) total each and every year until he was named an All-Star averaging 23.5 PPG last season.

This summer he was a free agent and was named to the United States Men's Olympic Team in Brazil. He could have moved back home to Los Angeles and signed with the Lakers, or even create a superteam with the Clippers, heck any team in the NBA would have wanted him, but ultimately he decided to sign a five-year $139 million contract to stay in Canada. 

So far, he's been worth every penny as DeRozan is currently the third leading scorer in the NBA with 31.4 PPG and is doing things on the court that hasn't been seen since "His Airness," Michael Jordan.

DeRozan opened the season on a historic pace, scorching every court he stepped on as he scored 30 or more points in eight of his first nine games. Only Jordan himself in 1986-1987 had ever started a season on a scoring streak like that.

The comparisons don't end there, his field goal percentage is above 47 percent and he is shooting 58.6 percent on his mid-range jumpers, numbers that Jordan and Kobe Bryant could never reach during their best years on the basketball court.

DeMar DeRozan’s shot chart this year. Has NBA-high 33.7 points/gm with 50.3% of his FGAs coming in midrange. Crazy. pic.twitter.com/67m6bfOBdR — Michael Gallagher (@MikeSGallagher) November 8, 2016

He is most lethal outside of the key and just in front of the three-point line to the point that opposing coaches in the league have called him, "The King of the Mid-Range," a crown that DeRozan himself is happy to accept.

"My mindset every time I go out there is, 'You have to stop me from doing this first. You've got to make me do something you think I can't do,'" DeRozan told the media of his mid-range game. "Until then I'm going to continue to do what I know I'm comfortable doing."

DeRozan credits his early morning offseason workouts and his film work for his success this season and says studying those before him has helped him in vanquishing those now in front of him.

"I watch a lot of the old-school guys," he said after the game on Monday night. "You hear about them scoring 40 a night before there was a three-point line, and they didn't have that athleticism and speed we have today and they still found a way to get it done."

Couple his Olympic experience in Rio with his added muscle this season and DeRozan's ascension into superstardom should not come as a surprise.

"I wanted to get stronger, but I didn't want to be that guy that comes back heavier or bulkier," he told Canadian News Outlet, the National Post before the season began. "It involved a sickening dedication to where I had a lot of days where it was just shit."

Those days started at 5:30 a.m. where he would workout with weights and go through rigorous basketball drills in the gym. Just because he was in Brazil with the stars and stripes emblazoned across his chest, did not mean those workouts stopped.

"This summer was the toughest I had, honestly," he continued. "I haven't really talked about it but it was really one of them grinds to where I really had to push myself, but it's just something I had to do."

His work ethic paid off as he has improved in nearly every facet of the game in his eighth season in the NBA. He's stronger this year, meaning he can take it to the rim with reckless abandon and absorb the contact inside the circle equating to more three-point plays than ever before.

His speed has increased as well, meaning if you try and throw a defender at him as soon as he crosses center court, he will blow by them at the perimeter and take it straight to the rack.

If you double-team him, he will simply beat you in other ways. His basketball I.Q. has improved significantly this season. He reads defenses better than in previous years and is aware when teams are throwing him different looks and disguising their defense with misdirection.

He's intensely studied the players that will be guarding him this season and he has worked tremendously on his footwork in order to utilize shot fakes, create space, or find the open man.

"Best footwork I've seen in a long time," his team USA teammate Kevin Durant said after the Warriors lost to the Raptors in the preseason.

Over the first seven years of his career, DeRozan averaged just 2.7 assists. This season, that number is nearly 4.0 and his rebounds per game are up from 3.9 to 5.3. His scoring has increased over 13 points per game from his career average of 18.

"I'm looking to make the extra pass, move the ball, and I understand that teams are going to collapse on me a little bit more and it's up to me to get everyone else involved," he said after dishing out seven dimes in the loss to the Clippers. "I'm just putting everything together at this point in my career."

His entire arsenal was on full display in front of over 60 family and friends at Staples Center on Monday night. Whether he unleashed his new crutch-inducing crossover, his sensational step-back, or that fancy fadeaway, fans in L.A. got to see a rising superstar on the court.

"It's always great to be back home playing in front of friends and family," DeRozan said as he left the arena.

Moreover, it's always great to see a local product return home, firing on all cylinders at the apex of his career, but still as humble as ever.