Nick Young Missed Capital Punishment Game Over MVP Snub or Travel Costs?

Wizards guard Nick Young had been a participant in the Los Angeles-based Drew League, a summer basketball league, for the past several weeks. He was one of the NBA players committed to represent the Drew League in a scrimmage against their counterparts from the Washington D.C.-based Goodman League. The exhibition game was termed “Capital Punishment,” and it was won by the Goodman League on Saturday. Young didn’t make the trip to the East Coast, and we’ve read two explanations why.

Miles Rawls, the commissioner of the Drew League, says Young was unresponsive to calls and text messages after losing out on the league’s MVP award. Young tweeted as much two weeks ago, saying “So 60 can’t get me MVP in the drewleague 30,40,41,43,45,30,60,35 each game I played.” A few days later, Young changed his tune saying “Y’all think I really care about winning MVP @rewleague come on man I play n that 2 get good run and work on moves I practice.”

So if losing the MVP award doesn’t matter, why didn’t he join the team for the Capital Punishment game? I am a GM.com passed along an explanation from Javale McGee, Young’s teammate with the Wizards, who says Young tried to book his flight for the game too late and the ticket was too expensive, so he didn’t purchase it. Hey, it is the lockout, so maybe being frugal is a wise idea. Hopefully he’ll participate in the LA rematch between the teams.