Lucas to stay with Rockets
Four seasons since John Lucas returned to the Rockets as their director of player of development and 44 years after they made him the first pick of the NBA draft, the team was confident Tuesday that Lucas will not be going anywhere.
Lucas and the Rockets were in “extensive talks” to stay with the team as an assistant coach on Stephen Silas’ staff, a person with knowledge of the agreement said.
A deal had not been reached, but both sides were optimistic it could be completed byWednesday, the individual said. Lucas was a finalist to become head coach when the Rockets selected Silas last week.
Lucas spent one season as a Clippers assistant coach in 2009-10 before he returned to the Rockets in 2016 under Mike D’Antoni. Lucas has been a head coach with the Spurs, 76ers and Cavaliers.
In other NBA news:
• A person with knowledge of the situation says the players are planning to vote on whether they would prefer to start the coming NBA season in December or wait until January, with that decision expected before the league’s board of governors meets Friday to potentially formalize some plans.
The vote by members of the National Basketball Players Association will show how many prefer a
72-game season that starts Dec. 22 or a season of perhaps 58 or 60 games that would start on Martin Luther King Day on Jan. 18.
Among the issues: revenue. The NBA believes starting Dec. 22 would allow for $500 million in additional revenue for the coming season, and the league’s primary television partners also want that start date in part to allow for the traditional Christmas broadcasts.
Some players, however, have said starting in December is too soon for teams like the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat, who were in theWalt DisneyWorld bubble until mid-October for the NBA Finals.
• Eddie Johnson, the two-time All-Star for the Atlanta Hawks whose career was shortened by arrests which led to a ban from the NBA and life
sentence in prison, has died. He was 65.
Johnson was a thirdround pick from Auburn by the Hawks in the 1977 NBA draft. Due to his explosive first step, Johnson earned the nickname “Fast Eddie” and averaged 15.1 points in 10 NBA seasons.