The Swaggy P era in Los Angeles may be dead.
It’s not a surprise, but Nick Young — the gunner with no conscience who became a Lakers’ fans favorite in an otherwise dismal season — has opted out of his contract with the Los Angeles Lakers and will become a free agent, reports Dave McMenamin of ESPNLosAngeles.com.
Nick Young has informed the Los Angeles Lakers that he will not pick up his player option and will become a free agent, his agent Mark Bartelstein told ESPN.com….
He had already made it clear he would not exercise the $1.2 million player option for next season and test free agency in hopes of landing a more lucrative, long-term deal. Young also expressed his desire to remain with the Lakers if possible.
Young was everything you need to be a star in Los Angeles — he is flashy and entertaining on and off the court. He averaged a career best and team best 17.9 points a game last season and did it with a career best true shooting percentage of 56.6%. He dropped 40 points twice. He shot 38.6 percent fro three but in general was a mix of good and bad shots, he just hit more of them. He looked every bit the guy who should be a sixth man on a good team, coming in off the bench with a green light to lift a team up.
Young, a Los Angeles native who played his college ball just down the street from Staples Center at USC, has said he hopes to remain with the Lakers. He just wants to get paid. He wants to be shown the Lakers really want to keep him by the urgency and size of their offer. The market suggests he would make $5 million a year or more for that skill.
Whether the Lakers will do that remains to be seen. This is a team protective of its salary cap space as it tries to rebuild and they are not going to give big money multiple years to a player and mess up that cap space.
The Lakers will take their big swings at LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony this summer, selling the Laker brand and playing with Kobe Bryant, but if they strike out the team is expected to sign a number of one-year deals (as they did this past season) to keep their options open for future big strikes.
That could mean the end of the Swaggy P era in Los Angeles.
