Lakers’ Top Pick Considers Europe : Green Not Pleased With Offer of $75,000 for One Year

Wednesday, A.C. Green was playing basketball.

By Thursday, however, he and his agent had turned to hardball.

Green, the unsigned No. 1 draft pick of the Lakers, showed up for the start of summer workouts Wednesday, and his Portland-based agent, Leon Jordan, declared: “He will play in the summer league unless things totally fall apart.”

Thursday, things hadn’t totally fallen apart, but there were definite cracks showing in the negotiations.

Now Jordan is talking, at least for media consumption, about the possibility of pulling Green out of the summer league. In fact, he is talking about the last-resort possibility of pulling Green out of the country altogether and sending him to Europe to play.

Laker General Manager Jerry West is talking about a one-year contract. Nothing more. He is talking about a $75,000 salary. Nothing more.

“That’s all we can do,” West said. “We are limited by the salary cap.”

Jordan, after a negotiating session Thursday at the Forum, said that West’s position was not acceptable.

“Things have not gone as well as we would have hoped,” said Jordan, who said he would insist on a three- to five-year guaranteed contract for his client. “We’re not sure it’s totally true that they can’t do anything (because of the cap). We think there’s some room for negotiating. There are ways the Lakers could work around it.

“Things have changed since the first time we talked. If they have now definitely gone into a one-year mode, we have a problem.”

Enough of a problem to prevent Green, a 6-foot 9-inch, 218-pound forward from Oregon State, from participating in the summer league, which will start tonight at Loyola Marymount?

“That very well could happen,” Jordan said. “There has also been a substantial offer made from Europe. We obviously want to play in the NBA. That’s everybody’s dream. But, by the same token, they have to be fair. If not, we have to explore other options. I hope we never even have to think about that. A.C. wants to play here, but we have to secure a financial future for him.”

When pressed, Jordan would reveal neither the nature nor the origin of the European offer he said he had received.

Under NBA rules, Green could get a large salary in his second year with the Lakers. By signing a one-year deal, he would be a free agent at season’s end. A club can sign its own free agent for any amount, despite the cap.

Instead, Jordan would prefer to see the Lakers spend some of the available cash they are probably going to shell out to all or most of their seven current free agents--Bob McAdoo, Kurt Rambis, Mike McGee, Ronnie Lester, Larry Spriggs, Chuck Nevitt and Earl Jones.

“There is a fine line between being loyal to those who have done things for you in the past and those you are looking to in the future,” Jordan said. “I can’t sort those things out for the Lakers. They have to do it. But we would like to be in the financial equation somewhere.”

Jordan and Green are scheduled to meet with Laker owner Jerry Buss today.