Nearly two weeks after the Los Angeles Lakers rescinded their trade for center Mark Williams with the Charlotte Hornets because, sources told ESPN, the 7-foot center failed his physical examination with L.A., his agent issued a statement Thursday disputing the Lakers’ decision.
“The overwhelming sentiment, after conferring with multiple, nationally recognized doctors, is that the Los Angeles Lakers should not have failed Mark Williams on his physical,” Jeff Schwartz of Excel Sports Management said in the statement. “Mark was ready and able to play for them and should have been given that opportunity.”
When asked for a response to Schwartz’s statement by ESPN, the Lakers declined to comment.
11dDave McMenamin
Williams returned to the court against the Lakers on Wednesday, posting 10 points, nine rebounds and two assists in 29 minutes in the Hornets’ 100-97 win. It was Williams’ first game action for Charlotte since the trade, which initially sent Lakers rookie forward Dalton Knecht, a 2030 pick swap and L.A.’s 2031 first-round pick to the Hornets for the 23-year-old big man.
Williams hadn’t played since Feb. 5 for the Hornets and was listed on the injury report with “return to play conditioning” before being upgraded to available.
Williams, a third-year veteran who is averaging 15.3 points on 58.1% shooting, 9.6 rebounds and 2.5 assists this season, told Fox Sports on Wednesday that he didn’t believe concern about his health was the sole reason the Lakers nixed the deal.
“I don’t think it was solely because of my physical,” Williams said. “I felt like I could have contributed to them. But, obviously, they had second thoughts.”
LeBron James, who dunked over Williams in Wednesday’s game, was asked what it was like to face the center so soon after the Lakers had him on their team.
“He was never a teammate,” James said. “He never stepped into the locker room. He never came [in]. We never seen him. We know the trade went down, but we never seen him. So when it got rescinded, it was just back to what it was before. So, it was no different.”
After the trade was rescinded, the Lakers have had to reintegrate Knecht into the rotation and find center depth by other means. L.A. waived Christian Wood, the stretch big who has been sidelined this season after knee surgery, to sign the 7-foot Alex Len after he was waived by the Sacramento Kings. Len is averaging 2.0 points on 40% shooting and 4.0 rebounds in 16.0 minutes through his two games with L.A.
Williams posted a carousel of photographs to Instagram on Thursday — including one photo of him attacking the rim versus the Lakers — and included a caption with the social media missive. It read: “There’s Always Peace When You Know The Truth.”
Two-time NBA All-Star Ja Morant is the Memphis Grizzlies player whose home was burglarized by the seven men from Chile charged in federal court with orchestrating break-ins at the homes of prominent professional athletes around the country, a league source confirmed to ESPN’s Tim MacMahon.
The Daily Memphian reported earlier Thursday that a senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation confirmed Morant was “Professional Athlete 6” identified in an FBI complaint filed Jan. 30 in Tampa, Florida.
During pregame availability Thursday evening in Indianapolis, Memphis officials said Morant had no comment about the news. The Grizzlies were to play at the Indiana Pacers on Thursday night in their first game since the All-Star break.
The FBI complaint doesn’t name the athletes and lists only burglaries already made public involving the Kansas City Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, Joe Burrow of the Cincinnati Bengals, Bobby Portis of the Milwaukee Bucks, and players for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the NBA’s Grizzlies.
According to the complaint, the Grizzlies player’s home was burglarized sometime after 4 p.m. on Dec. 19. The Grizzlies beat the Golden State Warriors 144-93 that night in Memphis. The burglars stole “jewelry, watches and luxury bags valued” at about $1 million, according to the complaint.
A spokesperson for the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office said deputies responded to a reported burglary Dec. 20 at a home in an unincorporated part of the county. Deputies declined to release the name of the player or the address during an active investigation.
Some of the men were arrested in January after a traffic stop in Ohio on state charges for allegedly breaking into the home of Burrow, the Bengals quarterback. In that case, four of the men were found to be in the country illegally, according to a court affidavit filed in Clark County, Ohio. The men took photos of themselves with some of the loot. The groups often separated into smaller units to commit multiple burglaries, according to the FBI.
