Lakers Forward Hill Charged With Assault at BetLM

Lakers Forward Hill Charged With Assault

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (NBA/Newsfeed) – Los Ange­les Lak­ers for­ward Jor­dan Hill faces a felony assault charge after his girl­friend accused him of chok­ing and shov­ing her in Hous­ton ear­lier this year.

Hill is charged with assault­ing 28-year-old Dar­lene Luna on Feb. 29 at his apart­ment while the New York Knicks’ for­mer first-round draft pick was play­ing for the Hous­ton Rockets.

The 24-year-old Hill was charged by Har­ris County pros­e­cu­tors in March, and he has a court appear­ance sched­uled for Tues­day in Houston.

Hill was apolo­getic, but said lit­tle about the accu­sa­tions after the Lak­ers’ prac­tice at their train­ing com­plex Monday.

“I just want to apol­o­gize to fans, to the Lak­ers, the orga­ni­za­tion, to every­one,” Hill said. “I can’t speak on it right now. I’m going to let my attor­ney, my agents take care of that. Unfor­tu­nately, it hap­pened at this time, but I’m going to keep my head up, keep work­ing, keep playing.”

When asked if he would be able to play in Game 2 of the Lak­ers’ play­off series against Den­ver, Hill replied: “I’ll be here, but we’ll see.”

The charge could affect a remark­able recent rise by the 6-foot-10 Hill, who has con­tributed valu­able min­utes off the bench for the Lak­ers in three straight games after play­ing lit­tle since arriv­ing March 15 in a trade for Derek Fisher. Hill had 10 points and 10 rebounds while play­ing 24 min­utes in the Lak­ers’ 103–88 series-opening vic­tory over Den­ver on Sunday.

“We had a con­ver­sa­tion,” Lak­ers coach Mike Brown said. “He has talked to Mitch (Kupchak, the Lak­ers’ gen­eral man­ager). But it’s not that we’re wor­ried about his men­tal focus. We just told him that we’re behind him.”

Accord­ing to doc­u­ments filed with Har­ris County offi­cials, Luna told police she argued with Hill about their future. Luna said the two had been dat­ing for about two years.

Luna said Hill hit her legs with his fists after she threw Hill’s two cell­phones to the floor. Luna claimed Hill then pulled her off a couch and threw her against a wall before putting her in a choke­hold from behind.

Hill played for Hous­ton from Feb­ru­ary 2010 until the March trade. Hill was the eighth over­all pick in the 2009 draft by New York but never panned out for the Knicks or Rock­ets, play­ing in just 32 games this sea­son for Houston.

After going nearly a month between appear­ances for the Lak­ers before mid-April, Hill has earned an improb­a­ble spot in Los Ange­les’ rota­tion head­ing into the play­offs over the past two weeks.

He had his biggest game April 22, con­tribut­ing 14 points and a career high-tying 15 rebounds while play­ing 35 min­utes after Metta World Peace’s ejec­tion from the Lak­ers’ double-overtime win over Okla­homa City.

Hill leapfrogged fel­low for­wards Troy Mur­phy and Josh McRoberts in Brown’s rota­tion with that per­for­mance, and his energy in the play­off opener helped min­i­mize the absence of World Peace, who is sus­pended for five more games for viciously elbow­ing James Harden.

Shortly after news of the charges broke Mon­day, Hill posted on his Twit­ter account: “Wowwwww,” and “Unbelievable!!!!!!”

The Lak­ers’ front office declined to com­ment on the charges.

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more NBA news see: Lak­ers for­ward Hill charged with assault.

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