Every day the Bulls play might need to become “Take Your Daughter to Work Day” (which is actually coming up on April 27), after a nine-year-old’s exuberant and loud screams helped her dad’s team, the Chicago Bulls, get the win over the Toronto Raptors in a Wednesday night game.
Bulls forward DeMar DeRozen and his team were trailing by 19 points during the NBA tournament play-in game. But whenever anyone on the Raptors went up to shoot a free throw, his daughter Diar interjected with “her eagle-like projection abilities to shriek.”
Her methods appeared to work, as NPR reports that “[t]he Raptors missed 18 out of 36 free throws as the home team, and allowed for the Bulls to make their comeback victory.” Citing ESPN, NPR noted that “it was the Raptors’ worst free throw performance of the season, and the most misses in an elimination game since 1969.”
Diar certainly stole the show, and her shrieks from the sidelines have now gone viral.
What did DeMar have to say about his daughter’s contributions to the Bulls’ astounding comeback win? “I kept hearing something during the game and it was on a free throw, somebody missed and I was like, ‘Damn, that’s my daughter screaming?’ I was just making sure she was all right, though.”
Ironically enough DeMar DeRozan was with the Raptors for the first nine years of his career, and it all started when Diar wanted to play hooky from school for the day, and her dad begrudgingly acquiesced to her request.
Per DeMar, “My daughter called me the other day when she was getting out of school and she just said, ‘Dad, can I come to the Toronto game?’ I remember her going to all the Toronto games when she was a kid and I almost said no because she’s in school back home. But she kept asking. She was just adamant about coming to support and I said, ‘All right, you can miss one day of school and come to a game,’” recounts DeMar, adding “I’m glad I did. I owe her some money for sure.”
As it “[t]urns out, the decision was worth shouting about,” and “even bec[ame] a conversation point during the ESPN broadcast of the game,” with one Twitter user tweeting out, “It sounds like a scream from the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Raptors beaten at their own game.”
Thanks in part to Diar’s handiwork, the Bulls will now advance to Friday night’s win-or-go home game against the Miami Heat, “with a chance to make the playoffs and face No. 1 Milwaukee [Bucks] in Round 1 of the East playoffs starting Sunday.”
Talk about #BlackGirlMagic!
When asked if the Bulls’ new MVP will be traveling to Miami, DeMar said “No…She’s got to go back to school.”