Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is coming alive! Despite that exclamation point, I’m not that excited, and you shouldn’t be either. Any good performances by Lakers players at this point are just the random twitches of the dead Lakers corpse. 29 points by KCP does nothing, it does less than nothing, to salve the burning disappointment of this season. Maybe, MAYBE, if it was Moritz Wagner instead, and instead of scoring 29 he scored 40, MAYBE that would soothe the pain a little. But not KCP, who is just a slightly overpaid disappointment, scoring just 29 points in a meaningless late-season win over another hopeless team while the Players Only crew tries to not fall asleep in the booth.
Caldwell-Pope signed a 12 million dollar contract for this year, a rare deal that doesn’t lock anyone in to stuff they maybe don’t want to be locked into. The upshot of that is that we might be nearing the end of his 2-year tenure with the Lakers. They were the ones nice enough to give him a couple decent deals after he foolishly turned down the Pistons’ mega offer (you can join Nerlens in the “bought into our own hype” corner of shame), but I can’t see that they’ll especially want him back next year. Although, since he’s a “shooter”, and despite Magipelinka’s best efforts (Muscala LMAO), there are still not really many shooters on the Lakers, maybe they’ll give him another cheap-ish one-year deal. As a reward for his loyalty or whatever.