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Los Angeles Lakers guard Nick Young is set to miss up to eight weeks of action, including the season opener, after tearing a ligament in his right thumb, the team announced on Friday. |
Young was injured on Thursday in practice while trying to steal the ball from Kobe Bryant and will undergo surgery on Monday, before facing between six to eight weeks on the sidelines. An MRI exam indicated Young had a complete tear of the radial collateral ligament.
The 29-year-old averaged a career-high 17.9 points last season, playing in 64 games, including nine starts.
He signed a four-year, $21.5-million contract extension with the Lakers in July and is likely out of their first regular-season game on October 28.
A day earlier, Lakers Coach Byron Scott said Young would have a chance at being the NBA’s sixth man of the year. And earlier Friday, when the team hoped Young’s injury was only a sprain, Scott wished for the best.
“Maybe I jinxed him, I don’t know,” Scott said. “I’m not going to say anything good about Nick Young for the rest of the year. Maybe that will keep him healthy for us.”
Young apparently smacked his thumb into Bryant’s elbow on the play.
“My answer to him was, ‘If you moved your feet you wouldn’t hurt your hand.’ And he just started laughing,” Scott said. “Hopefully it’s something that’s not long term.”
But it is long term. Not a good start for Young. Or the Lakers, who open the regular season October 28 against Houston.
Meanwhile Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov reportedly is exploring a possible sale of a piece of the club, and a prospective buyer might be the group that owns the Los Angeles Dodgers.
According to NetsDaily.com and ESPNNewYork.com, Prokhorov met in Russia with Guggenheim Partners executive Todd Boehly, whose group purchased the Dodgers for $2 billion in 2012.
Prokhorov is seeking a “combination of assets” with Guggenheim, NetsDaily.com reported. The story said the Russian magnate would retain controlling interest in the Nets, and Nets minority owner Bruce Ratner would still control the team’s home arena, Barclays Center. The team and the arena are each valued at more than $1 billion.
The NBA remains committed to keeping the Hawks in Atlanta through a change in majority ownership, but the city is pushing for a sale as quickly as possible.
Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed held a news conference on Friday to make it clear that NBA commissioner Adam Sterling supports Atlanta no matter who ends up owning a majority stake in the team. Reed said he has fielded numerous questions about a one-hour meeting with Sterling and NBA executives last Friday in New York.
“The NBA is absolutely committed to the city of Atlanta,” Reed said. “That really has been the threshold question given the way these events have unfolded.”
Bruce Levenson, who owns a 50.1 percent stage in the Hawks, announced that he’s selling his portion of the team.
Five-on-five competition is returning to the NBA Draft Combine next year.
The league considered a proposal from its competition committee and decided to return to a format similar to the pre-draft camp that was discontinued in 2009, ESPN.com reported Friday.
For the past five years, players were put mostly through shooting and ball-handling skills drills, which prompted NBA teams to complain about a lack of scrimmage-type action to evaluate the talent.