I agree, the guy was unstoppable on offense, not just good. He had a career high by a huge margin. No one's D was good out there as we lost by 40 points. Randle's certainly didn't warrant singling out when there seemed to be no team defense whatsoever. 30 points and 7 boards in 22 minutes, come on now. That was something pretty special.
To be fair, again, Luke was angry. The game had just ended, and it was maybe the 2nd question asked of him, what he thought of Randle's offensive game. He said it was as good as he's seen the guy play and it was impressive, but clearly his mind was on us giving up 139 points. I don't think he was trying to single out Randle, but he was asked about his game and he wanted to make a point that offense is nice, but the stuff on defense is what's important.
I agree completely with what Luke said. Hold kids accountable. Randle's defense was at times atrocious and at other times simply bad. I don't want a one-dimensional scorer from him, he needs to be better. Julius was tremendous offensively and while I don't need 32 points every game, he can replicate this sort of production on a smaller scale simply by pushing the offense every chance he gets. He got a good portion of his points in transition which helped him get in a flow in the half court. I liked his game better a few games ago when he scored less, but had 18 boards. Still, if the kids are auditioning to stick around, this was probably the best of the kids. I mean Zubac got in foul trouble basically immediately and Ingram had a decent game too, but this was better than what we've seen from his contemporaries. I'd give him a solid A-.
Randle: "Fourth quarter was garbage. I blame myself for that, and I've got to be a better leader than that."
I'm fine with Luke criticizing our players. This is the big leagues. Everybody doesn't get a participation trophy.
Why haven't we fired Luke yet? If we're applying the same standard to Luke that he's (or whoever is) applying to our young guys, shouldn't he be benched, at least? We're the worst team in the West, and we don't even have progress to show for it.
If you are the boss and you have an employee that doesn't do the job that he was hired to do and is capable of doing, should you fire the employee or yourself. Luke certainly deserves some scrutiny for the job he has done this year but this is the second coach that has some kind of issue with Russ. Since Luke is nothing like Byron, you have to think that maybe Russ does have some issues. As far as Randle goes, I loved his energy tonight but I'm ok with Luke mentioning his defense. These guys are getting paid millions of dollars to play a game for a living. It's a life that many people would kill for. I'm just not into babying our players. Could they have handled Russ's benching better...sure but maybe they talked to him and told have do X, Y and Z or you'll find yourself coming off the bench. We don't know what goes on behind closed doors. I will say I'm completely over the lack of accountability from our players. I'm not sure what to do about it but something has to change.
This is a strange way of thinking. Maybe you should change your way of "bossing." I disagree that Luke is nothing like Byron Scott. They're both players who were raised with old school sports psychology. If it doesn't work, keep beating on the problem and questioning the players' commitment. BTW, he's a coach. He's not a boss. If you were a manager and your team sucked, would you fire your coach? If you were an owner of a team that sucked, would you fire your management team? Note that the question isn't exactly the same as the one you're suggesting.
Julius really needs to work on his conditioning. The 2 missed FT's at the end of the 2nd quarter was definitely due to fatigue. And when he gets tired his defense gets even worse.
No doubt he was tired for those two and it showed. But damn, he had already scored 22 points in 11 minutes or so of play which is insane. And he was still 6 for 8 from the line with those two misses. But I don't disagree he does need to improve his conditioning.
I think at some point...people are sick and tired of positive messages when the team sucks like this. As a fan I want at least the players and coaches to admit that they realize that they suck. I'm perfectly fine with it. Also I don't know but sometimes maybe he has told them that privately a million times with no result, then he makes it public.
