When DeAndre Jordan signed with the Brooklyn Nets in 2019, he arrived as part of a global deal with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, and the two megastars signed contracts below the maximum to preserve space in the salary cap for sign to the All-star ex-pivot that summer.
Two years after the four-year, $ 40 million contract he signed in Brooklyn, Jordan was traded to the Detroit Pistons and resigned briefly, paving the way for him to sign with the Los Angeles Lakers.
When Jordan left a list full of each other’s stars, the big man said his relationship with the dynamic duo of the Nets soured on his way to the door.
“We’re definitely not friends anymore, so …” Jordan joked with a laugh during his introductory press conference video for the Lakers.
He quickly assured that the friendship of the trio remained intact. It was his role with the Nets, who came to depend on Blake Griffin and Nicolas Claxton in the fifth last season before signing LaMarcus Aldridge and Paul Millsap to add to their front track rotation this summer, that changed.
“We’re friends before basketball, after basketball and I think ultimately we all want to be happy,” Jordan said. “And being able to compete is something that’s very important to me and they understand that. And we’re brothers beyond basketball, so being a teammate or not won’t affect or affect our relationship.”
Jordan said his move to Detroit, along with four second-round picks and $ 5,780,000, for Sekou Doumboya and Jahlil Okafor, was the Nets organization that was working with him to help him find more opportunities. . Jordan took a $ 4 million purchase from the Pistons and will win the Lakers ’$ 2.6 million veteran minimum, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks.
“It’s that both parties wanted to find something that was better for both of them,” he said. “And I feel like they gave me that respect as a veteran player so I could understand that I wanted to be able to compete … It just worked better for both of us.”
He will join a Lakers team that has its own reserve on the front court in Anthony Davis, Dwight Howard and Marc Gasol.
Jordan, 33, is the last former All-Star of 30 and so many to join a Lakers team that is already full of players like Lebron James, Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony, Rajon Rondo, Howard and Gasol.
While he doesn’t have the pre-existing personal ties to the Lakers group he had with Durant and Irving, he has admired many team members from afar.
“Just being on a team like this with guys you respect and guys you’ve competed with in the past; getting into my fourteenth season has been great to see, ‘I wonder what it would be like to play with this boy, ”Jordan shared. “And you always think about it, whether you tell people or not.”
Jordan will return to Los Angeles, where he spent the first 10 years of his career playing for the Clippers.
“Obviously, as he gets older, he starts to see different things, and honestly, with the Clippers teams we had, we were unlucky,” Jordan said. “On the team I was on last year, we had a bit of bad luck with injuries and a few small things like that. But you definitely don’t want to take that for granted … I’m excited to be here and getting together with these guys and building chemistry and it’s going to be a process, but I think we’re all prepared and excited for that. ”