Laker fans want transcendent superstars. He's good, and someday might be pretty great, but he'll never be that. Basically Laker fans are extremely spoiled.
These are the plays we need more of. THESE are the easy looks that come with the offense Luke has created. I'm not saying this is just a Julius problem although he absolutely holds the ball too long, this is a team problem. Our kids don't understand cutting. They move around the court because they know the play, not because they're reading the defense.
Atrocious defense. Ship him out. I'm actually torn, as he does elevate his offensive game I'm crunch time. But his defense gets even worse it seems.
Love you guys. Yeah, he made a couple bad switches late in the game. He was monstrous for 95% of the game. Same with DLO. Horrible shots down the stretch, but good otherwise. You gotta take the good with the bad with these kids.
D-Lo took one "bad" shot but was fouled on it. I'll disagree there. But I'm rooting for Julius. Hoping to God someone teaches this team when to switch. You can't keep putting your clueless PF on a guard.
I rewatched the 4th and yes the switches were bad, but not for what we would traditionally think of it. Randle did a decent job on 3/5 possessions defensively against Kemba. The first switch, Kemba got a stepback and burned him easily. The next possession Randle forced a pass and his teammates fell asleep on the perimeter which lead to a made shot. The next possession Kemba drove and Julius forced a miss, the rebound went to Charlotte, and Kemba repositioned to the corner where he nailed a shot before Julius could recover. The next possession Julius forced another pass. The last possession Julius forced a bad miss and Charlotte ended up with the rebound. The culprit most of the time on these switches wasn't Julius himself, but that his teammates ball watched when he did it and then did not (could not?) box out and get a rebound. NOW, Julius shouldn't have switched regardless of coaching strategy because HE should have been the one who was underneath to secure rebounds while someone like Clarkson or Russell or Ingram tried to force a miss out of Kemba. The switching was definitely scheme oriented, but as a player you have to be able to audible out of it when you know it's a bad look. Julius was fantastic on the glass and more efficient than I think we can reasonably expect him to be on a regular basis. He was basically unguardable for the Charlotte bigs. They had no answers for him and he did a great job of picking his spots to attack and finding good angles. Julius also exhibited some of the above average court vision that he's shown flashes of. He forced some passes, but he ran into a lot of what Russell runs into: hands not ready for passes. He also continues to get lost in space defensively and still refuses to be vocal on that end. If you're going to switch, you have to tell your teammates. A lot of times he switches without saying anything which provides the opposition with a window to score. He's improving somewhat around the rim with more efforts to at least change shots, but he's clearly uncomfortable still defensively around the rim. The real problem is losing his man on pick and pops which immediately compromises the defense and leaves us scrambling. He's not the only one, but with him it's the thing he does most consistently. It's something he needs maybe more than a jumper.
I think this is the exact reason Randle is so polarising, because next game he is probably going to have a 10/7/2 stat line, obviously I don't expect him to average 23/18, but if he could just stick to a steady 16/10 with average D would be nice, which isn't too far away from what he's averaging now.
Pot calling the kettle black? Neither one of these guys have been the model of consistency either this season. They should watch their own highlight games since they have also been prone to such lapses in a huge way.
Thanks for the recap. Julius was solid defensively most of the game (otherwise he wouldn't have had 2 blocks and 3 steals), and one or two errors in the 4th doesn't negate his monster performance. The effort from Julius was one of the biggest reasons we were even close to end the game.
