Honestly, tranquility scared him. Not constantly being in the midst of chaos made him anxious. “You have your own trauma that you deal with where you try to put yourself in a self-sabotaging mindset when stuff is too calm and in place,” he says. DeMar needed basketball to turn his brain off and quiet the storm in his mind: “Basketball was all that, for me. It allowed me to get away mentally from so much stuff that was going on, to where it developed my passion for the game.” He started noticing that basketball took him to nicer gyms, schools and cities he only dreamed of seeing. It also fed his family, and family means everything to him.