{"id":411359,"date":"2026-01-14T02:47:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T02:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/411359\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T02:47:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T02:47:07","slug":"lakers-sign-22-year-old-g-league-star-former-first-round-pick-to-assist-luka-doncic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/411359\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers sign 22-year-old G-League star, former first-round pick to assist Luka Doncic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lakers sign 22-year-old G-League star, former first-round pick to assist Luka Doncic<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> haven\u2019t completed a trade of any magnitude this season despite having several holes on their roster.<\/p>\n

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However, the franchise did sign a 22-year-old G-League star<\/a> and former first-round pick on Tuesday to assist Luka Doncic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Los Angeles Lakers are signing guard Kobe Bufkin to a 10-day contract,” ESPN’s Shams Charania reported on X\/Twitter. “Bufkin has starred for the Lakers’ South Bay NBA G League affiliate and spent some time with the (Memphis) Grizzlies<\/a> this season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bufkin\u2019s NBA career has been far from dazzling thus far. As a valued mid-first-round draft pick, many expected Bufkin to, at the very least, be a serviceable contributor with the Atlanta Hawks<\/a> alongside Trae Young.<\/p>\n

However, due to the Michigan product\u2019s poor perimeter shooting and indecisiveness as a driver, he failed to have a positive impact with Atlanta during his short stint with the organization.<\/p>\n

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Bufkin averaged 5.0 points and 1.6 assists per game in 27 games with the Hawks, shooting 37.4% from the field and 22.0% from three.<\/p>\n

While Bufkin hasn\u2019t appeared in an NBA contest this season, he\u2019s been tremendous with South Bay (Los Angeles’ minor league squad). Bufkin is averaging 24.7 points and 3.6 assists per contest while connecting on 49.6% of his field goals and 43.1% from beyond the arc in seven outings with South Bay.<\/p>\n

The former McDonald\u2019s All-American\u2019s latest signing proves his NBA career is far from over.<\/p>\n

More NBA:\u00a0Mavericks trade proposal sends center to Lakers for $33 million point guard<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lakers sign 22-year-old G-League star, former first-round pick to assist Luka Doncic originally appeared on The Sporting News.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[7218,64,63,726,17422,98706,481,7232,11473,733,590,18419,56497,85,12830],"class_list":["post-411359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-atlanta-hawks","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-grizzlies","tag-kobe-bufkin","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-luka-doncic","tag-memphis","tag-nba","tag-shams-charania","tag-south-bay","tag-sports","tag-trae-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}