Los Angeles Lakers Luke Walton not happy making money warming the bench – NBA Update
In the present NBA scenario, with the lockout dragging on and the NBA owners dragging their feet over a new CBA, player salaries have come under some serious media scrutiny. Therefore a lot of players who are earning salaries which
are rather more lucrative than their talents would justify keep getting some serious stick.
One such player is Los Angeles Lakers forward Luke Walton. Walton, who stands 6-foot-8, is on a considerable amount of money, especially given his limited role in the side. He is set to earn around $5.8 million in the final year
of his deal. That money is over the average NBA salary and almost double the median NBA salary.
When one also takes into account the fact that Los Angeles already have players like Kobe Bryant, Derek Fisher, Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, Ron Artest and Andrew Bynum on their roster, and that Walton hardly gets any meaningful game
time, the salary just seems ridiculous.
However it is not all Walton’s fault. When he was awarded the contract, the Lakers did not have such a star studded cast. Moreover, Luke looked like a decent enough player. He made things happen on the court and he put in significant
minutes without being a liability. If he had continued in the same vein and made some progress, he could have justified his salary.
However, all that changed because Kobe Bryant wanted some high profile helpers on his side as he finally realized life wasn’t that rosy without Shaquille O’Neal on your team. Luke Walton just became a victim of circumstance; it
wasn’t really his fault that the Lakers had given him a healthy contract and no longer planned on using him.
He made his case in a recent interview,
“Obviously it bothers you as a player. You want to feel your worth. Obviously I’m getting paid a salary that was for a much larger role back when we agree upon the deal. I was a playmaker, I was playing 30 minutes a game and I
was able to do a lot of things for a team. And I had offers from other teams to do the same thing. … For the most part, fans have been great out here. Then, all of the sudden you bring in Pau Gasol and other players of that calibre and my role kind of gets
smaller and smaller.”
He continued to state how injuries and bad luck played their part in making his life pretty miserable,
“All of the sudden my back goes bad on me and mentally I’m frustrated. … The role that I was paid that money to do kind of got taken away in a sense.”
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