Larry Hughes Planning an NBA Comeback

The immortal Larry Hughes would like to get back into the League. Preferably, with a title contender. Via the WaPo: “Larry Hughes wants back in, whenever the NBA lets players back in. Hughes sat out all of last season after he failed to secure the deal that he wanted in free agency two summers ago. ‘Obviously, I wanted to play,’ Hughes said recently. ‘At the same time I wanted to be stable. I didn’t want to go to a situation where it was a one-year deal, or partial guarantee deal where at any time you could be out of there moving on. I wanted certain things after moving around the past three years, to different teams, I wanted something solid. If I didn’t get that, I wasn’t coming back.’ But when he participated in the Impact Basketball Competitive Training Series last month Las Vegas, the 32-year-old Hughes said that he wasn’t quite ready to retire. ‘I still got some game left. Having a role on a team, a contending team, is what I’m looking for. We’ll see how it goes.’ In the first 12 seasons of his NBA career, Hughes never was better than his final year in Washington, when he set career highs in nearly every statistical category and he teamed with Gilbert Arenas and Antawn Jamison to help the Wizards advance to the second round for only the second time since 1979. He cashed in big-time on that campaign, signing a five-year, $70 million contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Hughes never became an appropriate running mate for LeBron James, done in by a faulty jump shot and frequent injuries, and spent the final three years of that deal with Chicago, New York and Charlotte … Hughes said he wasn’t worried about being out-of-sight, out-of-mind from NBA teams when they look to sign players whenever the lockout ends. ‘I think my name is out there. My peers and everybody, they know, especially contending teams, I’m somebody who knows how to play,’ said Hughes, who has career averages of 14.2 points, 4.2 assists and 3.2 rebounds but has only played 70 or more games twice.”