After recently being announced as the latest addition of the Los Angeles Lakers, veteran guard/forward Jared Dudley has confirmed to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski that he had to convince LeBron James to give the team the go signal to sign him.
On paper, LeBron has no actual authority to green-light or to veto any deal the Lakers may pursue, but the reality is, such is his influence on the organization that it appears that player movement actually has to go through him before anything is finalized. This is exactly what Dudley spoke about on Wojnarowski's “The Woj Pod.”
Lakers free agent Jared Dudley on pitching LeBron James on his candidacy, "Once I got the OK from LeBron, when he signed off on it…we were going to make it happen." Plus: Nets getting KD and Kyrie. @JaredDudley619 on The Woj Pod: https://t.co/Km8AplJRec
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 3, 2019
While this is not exactly a shocker, it is still quite amazing to realize just how much power James holds in the Lakers organization. Then again, this is LeBron James we're talking about here, and surely, this had to be one of the unwritten agreements his camp signed off on prior to confirming his own move to L.A. last summer.
For his part, Dudley joins the Lakers following the conclusion of his one-year, $9.5 million deal with the Brooklyn Nets last season, where he would put up 4.9 points, 0.9 three-pointers, 2.6 rebounds, 1.4 assists, and 0.6 steals in 20.7 minutes of action. That was a pretty hefty paycheck for a second-string player with this level of production.
The $2.6 million, one-year deal he recently agreed upon with the Lakers is probably a more appropriate salary for a player of Dudley's caliber. Then again, the 33-year-old likely won't mind taking a huge pay cut considering how he is now presented with the biggest opportunity in his career to win his first ever NBA title with the Lakers.
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