Kobe Bryant sounds confident that Pau Gasol will be back. (USATSI)
The Los Angeles Lakers' roster is in flux for the next two offseasons as the team prepares to make a major run at a superstar or two to rebuild the core of the Lakers and give Kobe Bryant a pretty solid send-off when he's done playing. Bryant is signed for the next two seasons at $24.25 million per season and Steve Nash is under contract for next year at $9.7 million. After that, they don't have many contracts on the register and none of those are for big money.
Pau Gasol's $19 million expiring deal will give the Lakers a lot of cap space this offseason but could some of it be used to bring back the Spanish big man? Bryant seems confident that it will happen. LakersNation.com tells us Ric Bucher talked to Kobe and on a scale of one to 10, Bryant put it at an eight that Gasol would be back with the Lakers.
During Thursday night's game against the Los Angeles Clippers, Bleacher Report's Ric Bucher stated on the TNT broadcast that he spoke with Kobe Bryant prior to the game and asked him who he could “envision” on next year's team.
Bucher reported that Bryant included Pau Gasol's name, which the reporter said “surprised” him. Bucher further pressed Bryant, asking how confident the five-time champion is on a scale of one to 10, that Gasol will be with the Los Angeles Lakers next season, to which Bryant responded “eight.”
It's mostly been assumed that because of Gasol's lack of harmony with Mike D'Antoni and his system, coupled with the fact that the Lakers are looking toward the future with their signings, Gasol would likely look for new employment with another team. If he's willing to take a one-year deal to stick with the Lakers at a reasonable price, it would make sense for him to return. However, the Lakers can't overvalue Gasol and they certainly can't give him a deal past the summer of 2015 when it's expected they'll target Kevin Love as a free agent.
Gasol is the leading scorer for the Lakers this season at 17.5 points per game but considering this is shaping up to be the worst season in Los Angeles Lakers history, I'm not sure that's a feather in his cap. He's played in 52 of the 62 games and certainly is playing much better than what we saw last year as he battled some serious injuries to stay on the court.
Basketball Hot News
Woodson says ‘legally, no one can recruit anyone’ in response to Melo-Bulls talk. But that’s not necessarily true.
Knicks head coach Mike Woodson has enough to worry about, including whether he’ll even be employed by the team next season, before he can begin to think about what Carmelo Anthony may choose to do as a potential free agent this summer.
The latest rumor, of course, had Anthony being told by the Bulls’ Joakim Noah that Chicago should be his destination of choice if winning a ring is truly what it’s all about.
Woodson was asked to address the report, and said he believed that if that conversation had taken place, it would be a violation of league rules.
From Mitch Lawrence of the New York Daily News:
“You know legally, nobody can recruit anyone,” Woodson said in a radio appearance on ESPN 98.7. “You can’t do that at this point. Melo is still wearing a Knicks uniform and I hope he stays with the Knicks for the rest of his career. So whatever was said between Noah and the Chicago Bulls, that’s on them.” …
Those comments could be viewed as tampering since Anthony is under contract with the Knicks, and could result in a hefty fine for Chicago.
Wrong, wrong and wrong.
The league has strict rules in place against front office personnel reaching out to players under contract with other teams, but nothing that extends to its players discussing playing together at some point in the future.
David Stern addressed this specifically when he was commissioner back in 2010, when the Miami Heat managed to land LeBron James and Chris Bosh in free agency to play alongside Dwyane Wade, who was already in place.
From Howard Beck, then of the New York Times:
LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh became Miami Heat teammates last week, turning a shared dream into reality and unleashing a torrent of suspicion: Had they planned it all along? If so, was this collusion? Tampering? Illegal?
The answer, as far as N.B.A. officials are concerned, is probably not. …
“What we told the owners was that the three players are totally, as our system has evolved, within their rights to talk to each other,” Commissioner David Stern said. …
Players on different teams who discuss the idea of someday playing together “is not tampering or collusion that is prohibited,” Stern said.
Why is this the case? Mainly because it would be virtually impossible to enforce.
Players in this era are friends off the court, and talk to one another constantly. When free agency is impending, players obviously are going to discuss what’s next — sometimes playfully, sometimes more seriously.
Either way, whatever discussion did or did not take place between Anthony and Noah is perfectly fine under NBA rules. Woodson doesn’t need to know this specifically, however, because he has more than enough to worry about — especially with the team meeting with Phil Jackson about the head coaching position that Woodson currently occupies.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment