Nick Young’s Wizards teammates had been sending him pictures of the nameplate on his locker. Even though he was absent and a pair of nonroster players had been squatting there during training camp, it still had his name on it.
There were those in Verizon Center who chanted for him to be re-signed when the Wizards got trounced by Philadelphia in their preseason opener on Friday.
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But the most important thing was that with the regular-season opener barely a week away, time was running out to hold out. So Young hopped on a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Washington, arriving Monday morning to sign a one-year, $3.7 million qualifying offer from the Wizards instead of waiting for a long-term, higher-value deal.
| Up next |
| Wizards at 76ers |
| When » Tuesday, 7 p.m. |
| Where » Wells Fargo Center, |
| Philadelphia |
| TV » CSN+ |
Which means it’s a contract year again for the 26-year-old — this time with unrestricted free agency awaiting next summer — and he expects to make sure the rest of the NBA knows.
“I’m not going to sit back and pout,” said Young, who averaged a career-best and team-high 17.4 points a game last season, his fourth since being drafted by Washington in 2007. “Nobody owes nobody nothing. It’s a business, and if they want me back, I’ll come back to the Wizards. I’m happy to be here.”
Both Young and Maurice Evans, who also re-signed for a one-year, veteran minimum deal Friday, will be available to coach Flip Saunders when the Wizards meet the 76ers for a rematch on the road in the teams’ preseason finale Tuesday.
“Would I have liked to sign [Young] long term? Yeah,” Saunders said. “But things didn’t work out. … There are certain things Nick has to do to get to where he wants to get from a financial standpoint, and if he does what we think he might be capable of doing, then he can get paid.”
Evans is grateful just to be back on the court after spending the offseason shuttling between his home in Houston and New York, where he put in endless hours alongside now-teammate Roger Mason Jr. as vice president of the National Basketball Players Association, a commitment that came at the expense of a regular workout routine.
“Even one time, [NBPA president] Derek Fisher and I played in a lawyers league game up there, went and dunked out a little bit,” Evans said.
Despite weighing free agency interest from San Antonio, New York and Houston, Evans said he could no longer afford to wait for the free agent dominos ahead of him to fall. He also believed in the Wizards’ potential after contributing 9.7 points and 2.8 rebounds following his arrival in a trade from Atlanta in February.
“For a quick initial second, I was like, ‘What have I gotten myself into?’?” Evans said, having watched Friday’s 103-78 defeat in person. “… I’m committed to this. I had great talks with [Wizards owner Ted] Leonsis and [Wizards president] Ernie [Grunfeld] and just the organization as a whole. I’m committed to this organization as a player and hopefully beyond that.”
