On the first day of NBA free agency, it appears the Los Angeles Lakers will lose a guard to a division rival. Shannon Brown is close to a one-year, $3.5 million deal with the Phoenix Suns, per Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports.

It has been known for some time that the Lakers were likely to lose Brown, who made $2.2 million last season in Los Angeles. Brown set career highs in 2010-2011 averaging 8.7 points per game and 0.8 steals per game coming off the bench for the Lakers. He played in all 82 games for the Lakers in each of the last two seasons, starting seven games in the 2009-2010 campaign.

Last Friday in a news conference, Lakers' general manager Mitch Kupchak sounded like a man who knew Brown would not be back in Los Angeles. "I would think that this year he would look for, and he would probably get, a package financially that's much more attractive than we can offer under the present rules. I don't know where it's going to play out or how it's going to play out, but that would be my guess," Kupchak told Dave McMenamin of ESPN Los Angeles.

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