DeAndre Jordan is now officially a Lakers player. The center, who arrived in Brooklyn in 2019 with Irving and Durant, with whom he had a close personal relationship, ended his time with the Nets this summer to try to have more impact on another squad, which has led to you are asked if this change will affect your friendship with the two stars.
“Yes. We will never be friends again ”he said jokingly and later answered in a non-ironic way. “We were already friends before we played together and we will continue to be. In the end, we all want to be happy, and being ready to compete is something very important to me. That is something that they understand perfectly. We are friends outside of basketball, so being teammates or not being so is not going to change anything ”.
The pivot did not play a single minute in the past playoffs, and the truth is that already from the regular season it was seen that he was not a player with whom Nash had for important minutes. It is his desire to have a more relevant presence that has led to his departure to the Lakers, where he recognizes that he will play with teammates he admires.
“It’s great to get to my 14th season as part of a team where there are players that I respect so much and with whom I have competed in the past. In the end, even if you don’t tell anyone, you always wonder if you would be able to play with them ”.
Before coming to the Los Angeles franchise, however, Jordan had to agree on a buyout with the Pistons, from whom he will receive 15.7 million dollars of the 19.9 that were left in his contract: “We both wanted to find a way to resolve the situation. They have respected my decision and have understood that, as a veteran player, I want to be able to compete. This way, things work better for both of us. “
(Cover photo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)