Lakers let Darren Collison go following 10-day contract

Darren Collison may have finally gotten his last free dinner from the Lakers. After 10 days with the team, head coach Frank Vogel confirmed that Collison’s original hardship deal expired on Monday, and that he was not at the team’s practice.

On Tuesday, in a post thanking the Lakers for the opportunity to get his feet wet again on Instagram, Collison heavily implied that — unlike fellow hardship signing Stanley Johnson — he is probably not coming back.

This is not exactly a surprising conclusion after seeing how Collison’s tenure played out. Over his just under two weeks on the Lakers, Collison averaged 1.3 points per game and shot 2-7 from the field overall in 3 games. He was also not just a DNP-CD in his final two games on the roster, but completely inactive, with the team not even bothering to come up with a fake injury to explain why this guy they had wanted so badly wasn’t even getting a chance to show what he could do as his only 10 days on the roster to prove himself ticked away.

So... yeah. After literal years of being wined and dined, Collison’s Lakers tenure didn’t exactly live up to the hype of the original multi-week recruiting saga that saw him nearly join the eventual champions at midseason two years ago. Collison showed some flashes of fitting the archetype of a useful, defense-first floor general for the Lakers, but also often looked like a guy that had been retired and hadn’t played NBA basketball in several years. Probably because that’s exactly what he was.

The Lakers only have one roster spot open right now anyway, even when they can start giving out 10-day contracts on Wednesday, and it sure appears like they’re heading towards filling that one spot with Johnson. So unless another player enters the health and safety protocols, they can’t even bring Collison back anyway.

Could he have eventually gotten it together and filled a role for this team if given more time? Maybe. But it seems like the Lakers saw enough to decide to move on (at least for now) in their quest to finalize this roster.

This breaking news story may update with more information and analysis as it develops. For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow Harrison on Twitter at @hmfaigen.