DeMar DeRozan was a defiant child. That’s the word he uses: defiant. He would be told to do one thing, so he would do another. In high school in Los Angeles, the best basketball players would go to Compton Dominguez, like Tyson Chandler, Brandon Jennings, Tayshaun Prince. Or Compton Centennial, like Arron Afflalo. They won state titles. They were powers.

DeRozan stayed at Compton, which he could see from his house. Eventually, they beat Dominguez and Centennial. He stayed. He’s in Toronto now. It’s not that different.

“(Toronto) was a team that, after Vince (Carter), no one ever paid attention to,” said DeRozan the other day, as the 2014-15 NBA season loomed. “Everyone heard it: No one wanted to play here, no one wanted to come here. After Chris (Bosh) left, it was just so on and so forth.

“Me personally, I never looked at anything like that. I’m different. I’m different from everybody. I don’t care what nobody else’s opinion is. A million people could tell me one thing, and I’m going to believe my own opinion. It’s something you have to go through and experience yourself.”

He’s an all-star now, the first in Toronto since Bosh; he won gold for the U.S. national team this summer. DeRozan expanded his game last season in a way nobody really expected, on a team that bloomed in a way nobody really expected. The Raptors have had success before, and it’s always fallen apart as soon as possible. Maybe this time, it’s different. DeRozan seems to be.

“I’m just trying to be an example where, when I finish playing, I’ve done everything that people say you couldn’t do if you play for the Raptors,” says DeRozan, 25. “Everything from being an all-star, to winning a gold medal, to hopefully other thing, winning, playoffs, everything else, so that at the end of the day you can’t have an excuse. I did it here, so why can’t the next person?”

That would be a change. DeRozan got here in 2009, and Bosh left a wasteland behind a year later, and it was the same as it ever was. Last season, through some magic of chemistry and belief, it somehow became a 48-win team.

Now in the East there is LeBron and friends in Cleveland, and the hope of Derrick Rose in Chicago and . . . opportunity. Why not Toronto? Toronto always has built-in excuses, sure. It never worked, so why would it ever work?

That’s where the defiance comes in, and commitment. Another top-four season, a playoff round victory, will require the defiance of Kyle Lowry, who was challenged before last season by general manager Masai Ujiri not to let his talent go to waste, and who came to camp in the best shape of his life, despite — or maybe, because of — the security of a new contract.

It will require DeRozan’s defiance when it comes to making difficult shots that he shouldn’t be able to make. Remember when Ujiri bellowed out “F--- Brooklyn” before Game 1 of the first-round playoff loss to the Brooklyn Nets, and said it was a spur-of-the-moment thing? It was, a few minutes earlier, when he was speaking to a group of season-ticket holders and yelled out the same thing. He liked it. He told the world.

The ‘We The North’ thing is marketing, but Amir Johnson writes it in the dust on dirty cars, and it taps into something. Here we are, and we’re proud to be here. The crowd outside the Air Canada Centre in the Square became a beacon, and it looks like Toronto. There are parts of this city that have waited a long time for something to be built.

“You look at something you can do in one place and leave your legacy there that will last forever, it means that much more,” says DeRozan. “I look at Alvin Williams. He comes back here and they treat him perfect, like family. That’s what it’s all about. I never wanted to be the guy, when I’m finished, that has four different team jerseys hanging up in my house saying I played for them, I played for them, I played for them.

“If I could finish my career here and say I did everything here, I’d feel more accomplished than just doing it every other place . . . I take pride when I come in here and I see there’s a division title hanging up. That’s going to be here forever and I had a part in that. I just want more to come for a franchise that doesn’t have everything the Garden might have or the Staples Center might have, all the jerseys and the championships and all that stuff. I want to be part of something that can go on longer than my career.”

What are the traditions that have been built here? Good players leave. General managers fail. Coaches are fired. The fans stay, and they wait. The cycle repeats, and repeats, and has for nearly 20 years now, and through it all Toronto has always returned to being a basketball outpost.

“That’s pretty much over with now, right?” asks Johnson who, like DeRozan, has been here since 2009.

“That’s the question,” says a reporter. “Is it?”

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“I think it is,” Johnson says. “Whatever we’ve got now, we’ve got to stick with it, run with it, as long as possible.”

Maybe. Season starts Wednesday.