JC off the bench is awesome. He's probably our best player (again) this year.... so consistent and reliable. And now he's our best wing defender too it seems. And I agree that we need to trade Lou for a poor man's Rip Hamilton or Klay Thompson.
I agree with Luke's assessment so far after Game 2 of preseason he said JC has done the best for perimeter defense so far in training camp and during games. JC doesn't have to get steals for this to carry any weight. Every game hes getting a ton of deflections and fighting over every screen. Keep up the great work. I thought this was great insight into how Luke and the rest of the coaching staff knew JC had to get better on defense and I love the brutally honest comment. JC even said that he and the team "sucked" on defense last year and the team knows it. Watch the segment (starts at 7:40 about JC) http://www.nba.com/lakers/video?ls=nav_extended_multimedia
JC is our Ginobili. Good enough to start, but both benefit from coming off the bench playingnstarter minutes.
Dude that's one of the most spot on analogies I've heard in a while. Has anyone else thought about him starting as the PG if we traded DAR?
I don't like JC coming off the bench simply because it puts the Black Hole on the starting unit. I want the Black Hole off the team, not starting. He is complete fool's gold. Jordan should be playing as much as possible with Russell as they have a good rapport. This is one place where I think the FO dropped the ball big time this offseason. Our guard depth is really bad.
I feel the same way about the Black Hole but he will get his minutes regardless of JC starting or not. And the Black Hole may present a bigger problem playing with the second unit.
The black hole is a bit of a problem. I can see why Walton is going with him as a starter because he wants to potentially bolster the fire power of the starters and if he plays Lou with Calderon the defense is going to suffer in that second unit. Right now that's one of their biggest strengths. Calderon has actually done a good job with the team D and Clarkson has his back with some help D. That goes away with Lou in there. Then you have two short, older guards on the floor at the same time. I don't like Lou with the starters at all, but I can see the dilemma. JC should be playing a lot more minutes though, IMO, at least in the regular season. Lou is a one trick pony.
I think that is his reasoning as well...to try to achieve a balance. Clarkson will still see a larger slice of the minutes than Williams unless the latter is having one of those blistering hot streaks that the staff dare not put out. I reckon Clarkson has been informed or is aware of why. He is an intelligent young man without the selfish ego even if he does have an ego. Because of his versatility, Clarkson will be the one to close out games when matters are in the balance.
The thing is we can go with a three man guard rotation with DAR, JC and Lou with Calderon getting spot mins here and there if needed. But yeah, we have a little log jam that Luke needs to figure out but its a much better problem to have than what we had to deal with last season.
Agree... It is more of the case as to who is doing the figuring out with our situation as well. That small ball line-up you brought up does have potential. Williams with that group though tends to go iso most of the time which jams up the ball movement.
I won't really trade Russell because in my mind he's the closest to Kobe (meaning homegrown) we will ever have in this new era.
Better than Iggy same time? No, and I don't know that it's close. In Iggy's third season, he averaged 18-6-6, 2 steals per game, and he was already an excellent two-way player. Same age season, Iggy was 20-5-5, 2.1 steals. JC is a fairly different player from Iggy, I think. Clarkson has a better outside shot than Andre, or at least it's far better than early career shooting. You could build both guys - AI and JC - from Tyreke Evans though. Iggy is like Evans with excellent defense. Clarkson so far is like Evans with a better outside shot, a bit less playmaking ability.
It's a kind of a recipe for disaster unless Lou is seeing VERY limited minutes with the starters . We need another creator than DAR in the starting 5 with a frontline of Deng/Randle/Mozgov
bit of a trick question. IF george actually was available, russell might be an overpay. why? because when a player of george's caliber becomes available in trade, his team is going to get soaked. at least that's what has happened historically. if indy were in a position where george was forcing a trade, the lakers would be offering less than russell, imo.
