Nuggets point guard Ty Lawson appears determined to burn all bridges in Denver—he helped push out former head coach Brian Shaw, and recently made the digital gaffe of admitting he wished that he be a member of the Dallas Mavericks.
A list of Lawson’s transgressions the last couple of seasons includes: a missed team breakfast meeting in 2013-14 that resulted in being held out of the starting lineup that night; a missed practice immediately following the NBA All-Star break this season as he vacationed in Las Vegas; an arrest on suspicion of DUI; showing up late to a shootaround late this season due to an “illness”; and played a large role in the Nuggets’ mutiny against Shaw.
So, will Denver look to move their floor general this summer or next season? In short, maybe.
Per the Denver Post:
Once considered an untouchable on the Nuggets’ roster, the point guard’s actions over the past two years have done everything to remove himself from that space. His new reality? He’s as susceptible to the next good trade offer as any other tradeable player in the NBA.
During the latter stages of the regular season, word circulated throughout the league that Lawson wanted out of Denver. […] While that does not appear to be the case right now, it was clear that former Nuggets coach Brian Shaw and Lawson did not get along, and that left Shaw in position time and again to try to explain why he couldn’t get Lawson to be more aggressive. The answer, of course, was Lawson wasn’t going to play hard 100 percent of the time for a coach he didn’t like.
The roots of all of this were planted in training camp in 2013, when basketball started getting harder and, by extension, less fun for Lawson. Hard sprinting to the rim had been replaced by Shaw’s demand that Lawson be a half-court point guard — running a team instead of just running the floor. […] And then there was the losing. The losing the past two seasons grated on Lawson. And that grating, combined with his disdain for Shaw, didn’t cause Lawson to double down on his efforts on the court so much as it pushed him away. His time away from the court became more important to him.
