Jared Dudley departed the Lakers this week to join Jason Kidd’s Dallas Mavericks coaching staff, and somewhat lost in the heated online debates over just how much value he had for the Lakers has been the team’s reasoning for wanting to go away from him: A completely defensible desire to get slightly younger on the fringes.
This is not conjecture, rumors, or heresy, either. Dudley himself told Bill Plaschke of the L.A. Times that part of the reason the Lakers opted to move on from his services was due to them wanting to decrease their average age a bit (emphasis mine):
“No one owed me anything, Rob and Kurt were honest and upfront, nothing but respect and gratitude to them and Jeanie [Buss], I will be forever thankful for the opportunity they gave me,” Dudley said.