Nick Young Putting His Los Angeles Lakers Future in Question
Nick Young is doing a really nice job of submerging his future with the Los Angeles Lakers in oceans of uncertainty.
The 29-year-old shooting guard hasn't played since Feb. 22 and is done for the season after suffering a fractured knee cap. But watching from the sidelines isn't stopping him from making waves.
Not good waves, to be sure. Riffing on the perils of swimming among man-masticating dolphins is a different kind of swell. As are tales of sleep-farting.
Anecdotes like those, fact or fabrication, are welcome distractions as the Lakers finish up the worst season in franchise history. At his best, Young is comic relief amid dark times.
At his worst, he's sending unwarranted tidal waves throughout the organization.
Take the most recent beef between Young and head coach Byron Scott. The two have publicly been at odds for most of this season. Back when Young was recounting the time he eluded killer sea creatures, Scott interjected, fining him in front of the media for tardiness, per ESPN Los Angeles' Baxter Holmes.
That's the gist of their relationship thus far—one of a hard-nosed coach and free-spirited, authority-adverse player.
Which is why you just knew Scott's latest sentiments would not fly. Per the Long Beach Press-Telegram's Robert Morales:
"His priorities have to be a little different. I consider Nick either a home run or a strikeout-type guy on the offensive end. Just like I told him, he has to elevate his game. He has to grow as a basketball player if he wants to continue to play in this league for a long time. He has to get better moving without the ball, being able to defend people a little bit better and be a better off-the-ball defender as well.
There are areas in his game that he has to improve. And if he doesn’t, there’s no telling what we’re going to do this year in the free-agent market. But if we get the guys we want, then he’s got a challenge next year on his hands as far as being in that rotation and playing consistent minutes.
"
Well, this should end well.
It didn't.
“I’m used to it right now, hearing what Byron has to say,” Young said of Scott's comments, according to Morales and the Los Angeles Daily News' Mark Medina. “I take it with a grain of salt.”
A really, really, ridiculously educational grain of salt, though, right?
“Nah,” he continued. “I don’t know. I feel like it’s just a target toward me. It’s a little unfair. But it’s cool.”
Young really cannot be making those types of quips about his head coach. There are only a few instances in which players can bite the hand that plays them, and Young is gnawing on cuisine his future cannot stomach.
Unlike most of his teammates, he isn't contractually in this for the short term. Four Lakers players are under guaranteed deals beyond this season, and Young is one of them. He has to play for Scott again.
Short of the NBA permitting Kobe Bryant to be player-coach, the Lakers aren't going to show him the door after just one season. Young has three years remaining on his contract after this one, and there's a chance all of them are spent with Scott.
More to the point, Scott wasn't being particularly unreasonable. His delivery is brutal, perhaps even too blunt. But he's well within his means to ask more of Young, who's basically a one-trick specialist at this point in his career.
Offense is his bag, and even that part of his game is flawed. He's shooting just 36.6 percent from the floor on the season, a career worst.
Most of his baskets are still self-manufactured, since he struggles to play off fellow ball dominators. He's hitting on just 37.4 percent of his catch-and-shoot opportunities, and he's converting only 34.3 percent of his pull-up jumpers, which account for 58.4 percent of his total field-goal attempts.
The early returns on his offensive partnership with Bryant predictably aren't good as a result. Both players have seen their already unimpressive field-goal percentages dip alongside one another, and the Lakers are being outscored by 9.9 points per 100 possessions when they share the floor.
Part of this can be chalked up to overlapping skill sets. Both players operate best as the primary ball-bearer. But this on-court relationship is strained further by Young's inability to create for others.
Bryant can at least serve as a pseudo point guard when the mood strikes. Young passes infrequently, and when he does, it's not to the benefit of his teammates. He has 557 career assists through eight seasons (1.1 per game).
Stephen Curry, Ty Lawson, John Wall and Chris Paul have all exceeded 557 for this season.
On the defensive end, Young is inconsistent at best. Though he's generally a net plus at shooting guard, opposing 2s are posting a player efficiency rating of 19.1 against him this season, dwarfing his own mark of 12.7, according to 82games.com.
When Young's engaged, he's actually a serviceable defender. He takes plays off, loses players on cuts and screens—any off-ball movements, really—but rival scorers are shooting 6.2 percentage points below their season average when being guarded by him.
Some of that's the luxury of seldom starting. Young gets to face opposing second units, and the talent level drops dramatically between starting fives and bench rotations. He also has only 3.3 career defensive win shares to his name, which, for the record, isn't good.
Of the 147 players to log at least 11,000 minutes over the last eight seasons, Young's 3.3 defensive win shares rank...147th.
To that end, Scott has a point.
Young needs to do other things if he wants to be part of the Lakers' future. What he's supposed to be doing (scoring), he isn't doing well. He's needed to do a better job expanding his skill set long before now, and that hasn't changed. Public back-and-forths between him and Scott are just accentuating his warts.
That doesn't mean Young is at the center of the Lakers' downswing. They have a smattering of other issues to sort out, and Scott himself isn't exactly making things easier, as CBS Sports' Matt Moore points out:
"So yes, the boat wasn't built to withstand the iceberg. But Scott comes across as the captain of the Titanic telling everyone it's the boat's problem it hit the berg in the first place. Lots of coaches are short on talent. What you do with that is on you. And the Lakers are a mess in part because of Scott's outdated approach and lack of a cohesive gameplan. In short, he's done the opposite of 'make the most with the least.' He's made the least with the least.
"
Much about Young and Scott's relationship is a symptom of the times. Scott's comments wouldn't be interpreted so harshly if the Lakers were winning. Likewise, Young's devil-may-care attitude wouldn't be viewed as ebbing swag if things weren't so dire.
But at 29, nearly a decade into his career, Young shouldn't be part of the problem—especially when he's not even playing.
With roughly $16.3 million remaining on his contract, he isn't going anywhere. An offseason trade market for inefficient gunners rehabilitating fractured kneecaps doesn't exist.
For better or worse, the Lakers and Young are married to one another. And the Lakers, for their part, are going to change.
Through free agency and the draft, they're going to change.
If Young's attitude and play style don't follow suit, he ought to embrace his current view from the sidelines, as a bystander, on the outside peering into a bigger picture from which he'll have been displaced.
Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com and are accurate leading into games on April 7 unless otherwise cited.
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