Lakers News: Athletic Florida Product Inks Exhibit 10 Deal With Los Angeles

LA is getting a look at two new Gators this summer.

Your Los Angeles added a whopping five intriguing rookie prospects to their 2023 summer roster last night, though only four seem guaranteed to have some sort of role with the club heading into the 2023-24 NBA season.

LA added two new draft picks in former Indiana University guard Jalen Hood-Schifino and former Pepperdine University forward, and inked two intriguing undrafted league hopefuls to two-way contract slots in ex-University of Florida center Colin Castleton and former Missouri guard D'Moi Hodge.

The fifth, much more raw piece who's technically now a Laker is, like Castleton, a former Gator with potential NBA upside: 20-year-old sophomore forward Alex Fudge, a hyper-athletic, defense-first talent who needs to develop significantly as a scorer. Across his 32 games in Florida last season, he averaged 5.8 points on .497/.229/.589 shooting splits, 4.5 rebounds and 0.8 blocks per contest, in 19.3 minutes.

The 6'8" Fudge was the only prospect -- that we know of, at least -- who received two pre-draft workouts from the Lakers, so it's not a particularly huge surprise that LA is giving him a more extended look with this new training camp deal.

Exhibit 10 training camp signings are not guaranteed to make a team's final standard roster. There is an available two-way slot that Fudge might fill if he impresses the club's front office and coaches enough in his Summer League and training camp minutes, but it seems more likely that Los Angeles will give him a look by waiving him from its training camp roster and subsequently signing him as an affiliate player with its G League club, the South Bay Lakers.

Assuming Fudge does latch on with South Bay and log 60 days with the team, language in the league's impending new Collective Bargaining Agreement will allow him to earn a bonus of as much as $75,000.

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