The Lakers agreed to pay center Timofey Mozgov $64 million, their first and biggest free agent deal of the summer. That remains a very strange sentence to type.
And things are not off to an ideal start, about six weeks before the opening of training camp. From Mike Bresnahan of the Lakers’ cable channel TWC Sportsnet (he just left the LA Times as their Laker beat guy).
Lakers center Timofey Mozgov will have an MRI exam tomorrow after sustaining groin injury Friday while playing for Russia against Ukraine.
— Mike Bresnahan (@Mike_Bresnahan) August 12, 2016
We don’t know how serious this is, but it might be wise for Mozgov to shut things down for a while. Groin injuries tend to be slow to heal and easy to reinjure. There is plenty of time to get right before camp opens (unless the MRI shows something much worse than expected), but it takes time.
The injury-free Mozgov of two seasons ago was a much better player than the one last season nagged by injuries and seeing decreasing minutes in Cleveland. The Lakers have bet big on the former Mozgov returning. That means focusing on getting and keeping him healthy. This is less than an ideal start to that.
