I caught up with Marcus Thornton for SLAM today. He says he has no idea where the report of him declining a lucrative Maccabi Tel Aviv offer came from. But he is considering overseas options and has received some offers in China and Spain. Thornton and his agent continue to watch what progress is or isn’t made in lockout negotiations before he figures out what’s next.
“Once they start cancelling games, ruling preseason games out and ruling regular season games out, I guess that’ll be the last resort before I start really deciding what I want to do.”
As we all know, Thornton’s due a significant pay raise as a free agent. And the uncertainty of the lockout is stifling new contract plans.
“It’s very frustrating,” Thornton said of his pending NBA free agency. “Like you said, it’s terrible timing. But you can’t do nothing about it. You have to live and go on and hope they reach an agreement fast so we can start playing basketball again.”
In terms of the moves the Kings made before the lockout began, he likes the J.J. Hickson trade the most. James and I will actually be talking to Hickson later today sometime within the next week on the podcast, so we’ll get his thoughts on Thornton’s respect.
As far as the selection of Jimmer Fredette in the draft, Thornton sees no reason to doubt that he, Fredette and Evans can co-exist together.
“I think Jimmer would take the place of Beno (Udrih),” he said. ” Last year, we were on the court at the same time, so I think it should work out. Like you said, we play with guys who put the ball in the goal and I think it should work. You can’t relax off any of us so I think it would work.”
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