Report: Lakers won’t use stretch provision on Steve Nash

Back in February when Steve Nash was pushing himself in workouts to try to get back on the court, he talked about the stretch provision motivating him to do so.

It’s a tool provided by the collective bargaining agreement that teams can use to get out from under heavy-handed contracts, and it would mean waiving Nash this season, and spreading out the amount he is owed over the next three seasons for salary cap purposes.

But since the Lakers struck out with any free agents that would have required having additional cap space to sign them, Nash appears to be safe for the upcoming season.

From Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times:

And, of course, Nash, might be a reserve. The Lakers would have waived him had they signed Anthony and Gasol, but now they’ll eat the final year of his contract in one $9.7-million chunk instead of spreading it out over three years and taking up precious cap space in the summers of 2015 and 2016.

This is good news for Nash, who clearly wants to try to keep playing, and probably would be less than thrilled with the idea of trying to catch on with another team if in fact he was waived by the Lakers.

Whether or not his body can hold up for even the majority of the season remains to be seen, and he very well could be coming off the bench now that Jeremy Lin has been added to the roster. But if nothing else, it looks like he’ll get to remain in Los Angeles.