Cavs coach recounts taking a bullet for his teammate: ‘My career is over with’

Cleveland Cavaliers assistant coach DeMarre Carroll was shot while trying to protect one of his teammates during his playing career.

“One night, we had a party,” Carroll said when reflecting on when he took a bullet for his teammate. “My teammates and a couple other guys got into it. I tried to jump in the way and get one of my teammates and say, ‘Come on, let’s go. Everybody, let’s go — we need to get up out of here.’ Somebody that he was into it with pulled out a gun.

“He attempted to try to shoot his leg. He was tryin’ to shoot his leg to end his basketball career. So, me grabbing him and tryna get him pushed back, I end up gettin’ shot. I ended up gettin’ shot. No, no — yeah, I was bein’ a good teammate. I took one step, I fell straight to the ground. They rushed me to the hospital. I’m just in my head like, ‘My career is over with.’ The bullet missed my Achilles by a hair. He was like, ‘You’re the luckiest person probably on this planet at this moment.'”

Carroll agreed to join the Cavaliers’ coaching staff — led by new head coach Kenny Atkinson — after he was an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2023-24 season and Milwaukee Bucks in the 2022-23 campaign.

Before he entered the NBA’s coaching ranks, Carroll carved out a long career in the league. He played for eight teams — the Atlanta Hawks, Brooklyn Nets, Toronto Raptors, Utah Jazz, Memphis Grizzlies, San Antonio Spurs, Houston Rockets and Denver Nuggets — during his 11-year tenure in the NBA.

Interestingly, he never suited up for the Lakers, Bucks or Cavaliers in his playing days.

For a while, Carroll bounced from team to team and was unable to cement himself as an NBA player. It arguably wasn’t until he joined the Hawks ahead of the 2013-14 season that he finally found his groove in the pros.

Carroll spent two seasons with the Hawks, and across 143 total regular-season games, he averaged 11.8 points on 47.9 percent shooting from the field and 37.9 percent from 3-point range to go with 5.4 rebounds, 1.8 assists and 1.4 steals per game.

Plus, in his last season in Atlanta, he received consideration for more than one of the league’s major awards. He finished in a tie for the 10th-most votes for the Most Improved Player award and tied for the 15th-most votes for the Defensive Player of the Year award.

He also carved out an impressive stint with the Nets. In his first season in Brooklyn, the 2017-18 campaign, he averaged a career-high 13.5 points along with 6.6 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 0.8 steals per contest in 73 regular-season games.

Carroll last played in the NBA when he appeared in two games with the Rockets in the 2020 NBA Playoffs. He also logged 24 combined games with the Spurs and Rockets in the 2019-20 regular season.

The 38-year-old’s story of how he saved his teammate from a bullet implies that he was the consummate teammate in his playing days.