Ty Lawson was arrested early this morning on suspicion of DUI, his second DUI-related arrest in six months, report Jesse Paul and Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post. Lawson’s name has come up frequently in trade chatter since before the February deadline, and the teams with interest were waiting for Denver to reduce its price for the point guard, tweets Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, adding that today’s news devastates Lawson’s trade value. The Kings were reportedly one of those teams eyeing him and spoke with the Nuggets before the draft, but his off-court issues were a major reason why Sacramento wasn’t willing to give up the No. 6 pick in exchange for him, according to Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee (Twitter link).
Here’s the latest out of the Northwest Division:
- Jazz GM Dennis Lindsey said that the team’s roster is relatively set for the 2015/16 season, but the team could look to use its available cap space at the trade deadline to add a player who could help the team, Jody Genessy of The Deseret News relays (Twitter links).
- Joe Ingles‘ base salary with the Jazz on his new contract is $4.1MM but can he increase that payout to $4.4MM via $150K per season worth of performance-based incentives that are included in his deal, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders relays (Twitter links). This makes Ingles’ cap number for the 2015/16 season $2.15MM, as the NBA deems $100k worth of the incentives likely to be attained, and his 2016/17 cap number will range from $2.05-$2.20MM, Pincus adds.
- Kevin Garnett‘s two-year deal with the Timberwolves will pay him $8.5MM for the 2015/16 campaign and $8MM in 2016/17, Pincus tweets.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
That’s smart of Lindsey to preserve a measure of flexibility. The Jazz easily could be in the playoff hunt at the deadline, but it’s still too early to tell if their second-half surge from this past season will carry over to 2015/16. They can be either buyers or sellers come deadline time.