In an ideal world we ship Randle, Clarkson and Deng out for someone in a similar situation as Paul George was in last season.
I think Randle is low key not happy, but probably motivated to show the NBA what he's worth this year. I hope we continue to make him feel loved. He may be our best option available next offseason for the position, so don't go burning any bridges just yet.
probably to late imo, he knows he wont get a contract from mgmt and at best they match, thus now we might have someone making big $ but not happy to be here
I think he understands the contract situation, but I think he's unhappy about not starting. In his latest interview he did his best to not sound passive aggressive or irritated at the questions, but I thought the message was delivered. "Not my call" You can tell it matters to him.
passive-aggressive answer for sure, if i were him id be agitated to, to see a much less talented player start in front of me and doimg nothing to deserve the starting role either
what? how can you say nothing? He ran really fast in practice. He dunked on BroLo. His dad was an all star. He's a great Dad to his son on the team. And something about glue.
If we're really establishing a new culture then a potentially sulking Randle isn't a good look. He needs to embrace the role the team feels is best and bring it on the court.
Not sure if it's sulking. He's pissed and I like it. Any competitive player should be pissed if an inferior player took their starting position.
great players will not be denied his play on the court will dictate everything, and I hope he knows that
There's no indication thus far that he hasn't accepted his bench role, but he shouldn't be excited about it. Especially on a bad team with a worse player ahead of him. If he took the bench role happily, would we find reasons to be upset with him for that too?
I don't disagree with any of your stance at all, I'm just saying it seems like there's a next step that the board sort of leans into with observations like these. You posited that he seems unhappy and then sulking is brought up and now it's, "he shouldn't be sulking! that's bad!". Well he's not actually sulking. If anything he's looked better in this role than he has in a while. He's played with energy and has mostly dominated against teams' benches. He's doing fine and it'd be really strange if he were benched for Larry and went to the media happily about it. Most great sixth men don't necessarily embrace the role right away because the best sixth men are guys who could start for a lot of teams.
Pelicans are headed for a disastrous season and they'll need to show something for the trade they made last year and they can't risk Cousins leaving them for nothing. Enter Randle, Clarkson and Deng. Heck, we'll maybe have to throw in another young player like Zubac, Thomas Bryant or heck, Larry Nance to get this deal done.
Cousins, Bogut, and Lopez on the same roster? And all will be FA in 2018. It just doesn't sound that appealing.
Well, I clearly wrote a potentially sulking Randle taking into account that the reports of him being unhappy was an observation people were making. So there's that. I know that people are running the whole "Randle's getting picked on" angle going around as of late and while some of it may be fair, I won't be holding back any thoughts on him or his play. He's in his fourth year. He knows how tough it is in LA. I expect him to embrace his role and bring it on the court no matter if he's starting or coming off the bench. It all seemed to work fine for him in the preseason so I was genuinely a bit surprised that he came across as unhappy. Could be a good fit for him in the long run and might just help him lock a future role up with this team when free agency hits.
Pretty hard for a double double guy, before his body transformation, to feel he's no longer a starter when he's put in more work than ever. Because of his limitations, it actually might be the ideal role for him, but he's too young to accept it right now. Most young players have very lofty expectations, and Jordan Clarkson, he's probably just now embracing his sixth man role. Takes awhile,but pretty sure he'd rather be here than elsewhere
