Luol Deng is at the L. A. Lakers on the siding, most of the season so far has been spent on the Inactive List. Now the forward told ESPN he’d like to leave.
“It definitely hurts,”said Deng on Tuesday,”but I can only feel outside of LA. to prove it. I’m not being used here, I’m not in rotation, so I can’t prove myself.”
In 2016, Deng was awarded a four-year contract for 72 million dollars to L. A. But now players like Kyle Kuzma, Brandon Ingram and Larry Nance are in the focus of the rebuild on the forward positions. The 32-year-old, on the other hand, is now only needed as a mentor.
“The boys don’t understand the basketball business yet, so I can’t show up here every day in a bad mood. I must be in a good mood, because the boys here are living their dream of being an NBA player.
Deng confirmed that he and his agent Jeff Austin are already looking for a solution with the Lakers. However, he knew that it would not be easy to finalize a buyout or trade in view of his contract,”you don’t know. It could be a month, a week, three months,”says Deng. He wanted to keep himself fit to be ready for a new chance at any time.
Actually, he just wants to have a chance to forget the last season, when he had the worst numbers of his career “You spend the whole summer preparing and showing that it was just a bad year. I know I’m making a lot of money, but for me – I come from the bottom up, so it was always about love for the game.”