Chauncey Billups (photo. Jonathan Mannion)
This season, we’ll see what feels like an unprecedented number of players and coaches reunited with their former teams. After a flurry of offseason moves, we’re taking a moment to celebrate some of the best “homecomings” of the upcoming 2013-2014 season.
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10. CARL LANDRY
Back in 2011, the Kings’ old regime traded Landry so that they could land Marcus Thornton. Now, the new ownership is bringing him back on a four-year, $27 million deal. Landry played well in Golden State last season, but he joins a crowded frontcourt in Sacramento that already features DeMarcus Cousins, Jason Thompson and Patrick Patterson, so something will eventually have to give.
9. KURT RAMBIS, MARK MADSEN
Rambis was an assistant coach for the Lakers on-and-off for more than a decade before leaving in 2009 to take the head coaching job with the Minnesota Timberwolves… from which he was promptly fired after two forgettable seasons. Prior to all this, the bespectacled and mustachioed Rambis won four championships as the all-out hustle man for the Showtime Lakers of the 1980s, and near the end of this July, the organization announced it had re-hired Rambis as an assistant coach.
Speaking of hustle, the Lakers also recently hired the human mascot himself, Mark Madsen, as a player development coach, a role which will presumably consist of mentoring Robert Sacre in the finer points of sideline celebration dances.