Pau Gasol not perturbed by transfer talk – NBA Update
Los Angeles Lakers star Pau Gasol has said he doesn’t pay much heed to what comes out from the rumour mill and is just concentrating on the job at hand.
The power forward has been linked with an exit from Los Angeles in the papers but he is confident he will be here come next season and perform as well as he can.
"There's a lot of speculation," said Gasol, speaking at the Lakers practice facility on Wednesday. "There's a lot of rumours going around and that's understandable, I guess, to an extent. It creates attraction.”
In fact, it’s not just Gasol, but the whole Lakers roster that has been featured in the back pages at one time or another. The only man exempt from transfer talks is talismanic super star Kobe Bryant, everyone else could be up
for a trade according to the rumours.
Andrew Bynum, Lamar Odom and Gasol are some of the more prominent members in the Lakers locker room that have come under pressure due to frenzied speculation, but the forward is keeping his cool. He knows that such talk before
the start of the season is pretty routine in today’s NBA.
Gasol told ESPN that the lure created by speculating on arrivals and departures of players at a franchise serves to rekindle the interest of fans and brings some attention to the league.
“It's good for the fans, I guess, to have this kind of attention and good for the NBA, I guess, also too. As long as nothing happens to me, we have the guys that we have and we're completely fine with that and we'll go to war with
the team that we end up having, no matter who is [here]."
Gasol doesn’t really mind all that. He also knows that because of the poor end to their season, the Lakers, and Gasol in particular, were always going to be subjected to the kind of scrutiny they are going through at the moment.
"You can't control that, really, you can't really avoid it," Gasol said. "So, you're going to hear your name every now and then, here and there, and again after the way the season ended last year it's kind of expected.”
Los Angeles crashed out in a clean sweep to the Dallas Mavericks last season, bringing the career of long-time head coach Phil Jackson to a disappointing end. Pau’s performance throughout the post season was below par, even earning
him the ire of Lakers fans, so he was always going to be a target transfer talk.
He has though redeemed himself during the summer with a stellar showing at the EuroBasket tournament, which he won with the Spanish National Men’s Basketball team.
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