Lakers Veteran Hints That He’d Only Like to Play 1 More Year in NBA

The Los Angeles Lakers look pretty good at the moment. Players won the championship last season and it looks like they will do the same again. The Lakers rely on strong veteran presence, and NBA experts are pretty impressed.

Jared Dudley has been part of the NBA for 14 years. He won his first ring with the Lakers. The veteran is no longer in his prime, but he has become a valuable player for the team. In 2021, Dudley played in six of 19 games and averages 3.7 minutes per game. That’s a career-low for the veteran.

Dudley may not be seeing too much playing time on the floor. However, he enjoys his leadership role. LA can definitely use him as an assistant coach. Dudley is 35 and he is working on the perfect retirement plan.

Lakers veteran to keep his role in the next NBA season

The veteran went on Danny Green’s Insider the Green Room and talked about his future in the league.

“When I was a kid in junior high, high school and going into college and stuff like that, my goal was to play 10 years in the NBA. And it’s so funny because when you get to the NBA, most people don’t know this, 10 years is the full, max pension, so it makes sense, right? If you play 20 years, doesn’t matter, you get the same pension from 10 to 20 …

“Now, what people don’t realize is the older you get, it’s not really about you, it’s about your family and your kids. So I have a youngest son who’s nine. A daughter who’s 11, another daughter who’s six. My son, I’m trying to somewhat inspire him, so I would love to play one more year, 15, hopefully we can get this coronavirus gone and get fans (back). I want him one last year so he knows that I couldn’t do more than that, sometimes they boot you out, they might try to boot me out this year.

“But I just think that you need vets to be able to help out in the locker room, man, and I think if it’s not with the Lakers, I believe there is a team out there that will respect what I can do and help that locker room, and I would love to see my son maybe even travel to some games. I want my last hurrah, him to be heavily, heavily involved.”

From what we can see, Dudley would definitely love to play at any cost. The Lakers may not have him in 2022, but he can easily sign with another team. NBA teams can easily offer him a similar role to the one has in LA.