Didrick Lawson (27) of the U.S. has played in the Korean Basketball League (KBL) since 2020. He played 21.8 points, 9.8 rebounds, and 4.5 assists in the Wonju DB last season, putting his team at the top of the regular league. He was also awarded the Most Valuable Player award. He also said that he is seriously considering naturalizing as a Korean citizen. However, he abruptly refused to renew his contract with DB last month and left for the U.S. Most analysts say that his team is interested in the Chinese league, which offered him 1 million dollars, twice the annual salary of 500,000 dollars.
However, it turns out that the real reason was that he was hurt by the Korean basketball behavior when he was a member of the Goyang Carrot (currently Sono in Goyang). Lawson played for the Goyang Carrot during the 2022-2023 season. He led his team to the semifinals of the playoffs. At that time, all of the players, coaching staff, and employees of the team had not been paid since December 2022 due to financial difficulties at Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering. Lawson also had not been paid for six months. Lawson moved to the DB last season and requested around 100 million won (about 9.8 million U.S. dollars) in unpaid salary to Carrot and Korea’s representatives more than 20 times, but failed to receive the money.
DB manager Kim Joo-sung said, “When I interviewed Lawson around January, I heard about Carrot. I looked around, but it was not something we could solve,” adding, “When I contacted Lawson’s Korean representative last month, I already separated from Lawson, and I have not been able to contact Lawson since then.”
The problem is that after the 2022-2023 season, the KBL paid unpaid salaries to Korean players who were former Carrot players. Lawson and David Simon, former foreign players, were excluded. A KBL official said, “As Korean players are Korean basketball assets, the board of directors decided to pay salaries for now. For foreign players who are not sure when they will leave Korea, the next issue was decided.”
Lawson told his Korean representative, “If there was at least one person who wanted to pay the money that I didn’t get paid, there would have been left. However, everyone was irresponsible. I think I tried to make it happen as time passed,” Lawson said. “I am not a slave who runs without receiving money.” Lawson and some other employees have not received unpaid salary. A former Goyang Carrot employee sighed, “We are still in litigation with Carot, but it is hard to get paid even if we win.” 퀸알바
