If the Lakers sign Metta World Peace, which they are thinking about doing, as reports indicate, the primary job for the 15-year NBA veteran who turns 36 in November would be to mentor forward Julius Randle, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders tweets. Randle, the Lakers’ first round draft pick in 2014, suffered a broken leg in his NBA debut last season, but is on track to be recovered by the start of the 2015/16 season.
Here’s more news out of Los Angeles:
- D’Angelo Russell, who reportedly has Lakers‘ part-owner Jim Buss excited about the upcoming season, plans to meet with current star Kobe Bryant and retired star Steve Nash to pick their brains about how to stick around in the league, Mark Medina of The Los Angeles Daily News reports.
- Clippers owner Steve Ballmer turned down a $60MM per year offer for local TV rights and is going ahead with a plan to start his own streaming network, reports Claire Atkinson of the New York Post. While there has been talk since last year of the Clippers using a streaming service, the belief is that FOX Sports will find a way to keep them, Arash Markazi of ESPNLosAngeles.com tweets. Atkinson cites experts who doubt that the 59-year-old owner would be able to pull it off. To make $60MM in revenue, the Clippers would have to sign up around 10% of the city’s five million households and get a pretty high price for the service, Atkinson writes.
I never thought I would see the former Ron Artest reach the level of mentor and elder statesman. He could start by giving Randle a list of all the crazy things he did when he was younger and saying, “Don’t do this.”