Magic to represent Lakers at draft lottery
Lakers president of basketball operations Magic Johnson will be the public face of the team during next month’s draft lottery.
Johnson will appear on the lottery show that will be broadcast May 16. The drawing for draft positioning will happen off camera before the show. Each team will have a representative observe the drawing. The Lakers will have general manager Rob Pelinka backstage, the team said.
This year’s lottery is particularly important for the Lakers. They finished 26-56, the third-worst record in the NBA. That gives them about a 47% chance to win a draft pick in the top three during the lottery.
If the Lakers’ draft pick falls out of the top three, they will have to send the pick to Philadelphia and send their 2019 first-round pick to Orlando. Both moves are part of trades that brought Steve Nash and Dwight Howard to the Lakers in 2012. If the Lakers’ draft pick remains in the top three, they will keep it and instead send next year’s firstround pick to the 76ers. Orlando will then get two second-round picks instead of a 2019 first-rounder.
The Buffalo Bills did not match the contract offer tendered by the New England Patriots to restricted free-agent running back Mike Gillislee, making official the offer sheet Gillislee signed. As a result of not matching the Patriots' offer, the Bills receive New England's fifthround pick in this week’s draft . ... Jake Long, the No. 1 pick in the 2008 draft and a four-time Pro Bowl left tackle for the Miami Dolphins, announced his retirement. Long was playing for the Minnesota Vikings last fall when his season was cut short because of a torn Achilles’ tendon . ... The Seattle Seahawks have “kind of moved past” the idea of trading cornerback Richard Sherman, general manager John Schneider said, but haven’t ruled it out.
Serena Williams has spoken out in response to suspended Romanian Fed Cup captain Ilie Nastase’s comments speculating about the skin color of the baby the pregnant Williams is expecting. The 23-time major champion wrote on Instagram: “It disappoints me to know we live in a society where people like Ilie Nastase can make such racist comments towards myself and [my] unborn child.” Williams is black. Her fiance, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, is white. Williams also referred to Nastase’s “sexist comments against my peers” — a reference to his verbal abuse directed at British player Johanna Konta, British captain Anne Keothavong and the chair umpire during Fed Cup matches over the weekend. Nastase was ejected from the match between Romania and Britain and provisionally suspended by the International Tennis Federation.
Aaron Hernandez’s family and friends bid farewell to the former NFL star at a private funeral and a judge ordered that three suicide notes he left be turned over to his fiancee. Dozens of mourners turned out for the invitation-only service in Hernandez’s hometown of Bristol, Conn., including his mother and fiancee, several of his defense attorneys and friends from his playing days at Florida and with the Patriots. Hernandez, who was serving a life sentence for a 2013 murder, hanged himself in his cell in a maximum-security prison in Massachusetts on April 19, only days after he had been acquitted of murder charges in the shooting deaths of two men in Boston in 2012.
Louisville’s Jaylen Johnson will hire an agent and make himself available for the NBA draft, the 6foot-9 junior forward said . ... North Carolina’s Joel Berry, Tony Bradley and Theo Pinson declared their eligibility for the draft, but haven’t signed with an agent and can return to school if they do not sign with one.
Joe Thornton of the San Jose Sharks underwent surgery on his left knee for an injury that sidelined him for less than two weeks before he returned to play the final four games of a first-round playoff series loss to the Edmonton Oilers.