Ty Lawson and Kenneth Faried, according to Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders, say that they would prefer to be traded if the Nuggets can’t make a “big move” to increase the team’s chances to win this season.
Sources close to the process say Lawson and Faried have kept no secret of their discontent and unless the Nuggets can pull off something major on the coaching front or make a significant trade, both have indicated they’d rather see a trade instead of sticking around for a long rebuild.
Interesting. I think what we have here is an overstatement of the importance to both Lawson and Faried to the process of choosing a coach and making trades. Their leverage is virtually non-existent and any declaration of wanting to be traded holds little to no weight … particularly considering each players' history in regard to both on (Lawson and Faried) and off the court (Lawson) behavior.
Kyler’s article is a bit bizarre. By far the Nuggets most effective player down the stretch was Danilo Gallinari and the article doesn’t mention him at all … which is very odd. He outperformed everyone on the Nuggets once he got healthy and is entering into the last year of his deal with the team. Now, it’s easy to discount Gallo because of his injury history … but he did drop two 40 point performances within two weeks of each other at the end of the year and acquitted himself far better down the stretch than either Lawson or Faried. You’d think that if this sort of thing was coming from him it would be a bit more credible. That’s just me though.
This makes an already fascinating offseason, even more so, and we will be watching to see which direction the Nuggets go. Starting with the NBA Draft on June 25th.
