Russell Westbrick Discussion: Clipper Gonna Clip

lol, i was only half kidding. we showed you can win playing avery bradley as your starting "pg" (even kcp!) when you employ lebron. both schroder and russ were founded on the idea that lebron needs a ballhandling guard on the floor when he really doesn't. it's not like russ created easier shots for lebron when they played together.

 

All I know is that I would prefer to see Russ shipped out. We gave away 6’5, 6’10 and 6’7 guys all under 30 (KCP, Kuz, Trezz) and replaced them with shorter, older and less talented players. I just want our competitive depth back.

 

LOL. Wonder if he's back to his preferred summer workouts mean mugging and flexing at the dudes with the foam sticks. That definitely helped him last year.



Maybe dudes should try old school cricket bats this summer ... upside his head to get him working on those pull up Js instead? Like stop shooting them?

Not at you @svtzr ... at Brick. Probably still had enough of that athleticism left, under tutelage of an elite defensive coach, to have still been at least decent, if not actually good. If he gave a real s*** about on ball any more .... and wasn't dumb as a rock and clueless plus couldn't care less about staying with his man off ball.

 

I do recall something about Lebron having his best scoring season in a long time and there were some assisted by Westbrook stats that were interesting. Like in one season he assisted Lebron more than two seasons of everyone else.

I would like to see Lebron play more off ball moving forward and finish plays. But I’m not sure that’s realistic - after all like you said Lebron is the PG and he will do what he does.

It’s actually quire shocking how poor defensively he was. There was a video of him guarding Steph in Washington last season that is some of the best defence on Steph I’ve seen in a while. Guy ran through every screen, bumped Steph on every catch of the ball and generally gave him no space. I think Steph shot like 5/20. He has the ability - he just pouted the whole season instead of using them.

 

“Pouted” …. Ha! Apt description. The guy’s not about team because the staff expected things from him he didn’t really care to work on. Poor me I was asked to change the way I always play.

 

I just think Westbrook is a very emotional guy with higher than normal levels of paranoia. I’ve recognised the same behavioural tendencies in other people who clawed their way from nothing to the top of their field.

So in saying that, I feel like we didn’t pander enough to his insecurities and making him feel wanted and needed. And by not making him special, in turn I think he didn’t do the difficult things like defend properly but rather just did what was the bare minimum. It’s one of the reasons why I think we didn’t use him well.

If you make Westbrook feel like a main cog, he does bring it. In OKC his last two seasons he turned his defence up alongside PG. In Houston he altered his scoring and had his best offensive season. In Washington he went hulk mode and carried a team to a 60 win pace over two months behind 20-15-15. Here, he checked out and took the fan hate and the clueless nature of how to use him from the coaching staff as attacks against him and he shut down.

If we get a good trade for him, the easiest thing to do is to cut ties. But we won’t get a good trade - so we have to do what we can to get the most out of him and this season. So sign all the injury prone high reward players we can and let’s roll the dice to see what the fates give us. Worst case everyone expires anyway.

 

i still don't think that catering to russ at this stage in his career leads to wins, but i agree with the rest.

he could have 3-4 more productive years if he accepted a 6th man role, but he seems to want to go to china or retire instead.

 

It’s a good point and I think you’re probably right. It would take some special coaching and effort from everyone to really have a great season with our roster. But to me it’s a better chance than trading for injured players.

 

but what if the injured players come with healthy ones?

 

I don’t count Rozier as better, the other options from memory were Wall, Brogdon, Hayward. I don’t consider any of those pieces worth it.

 

With trades chemistry and fit has to factored in. That’s what pushes me firmly in the move Russ camp. Last year we didn’t have either. Tough to see that happening next season if we don’t trade Westbrook.

I do note that i think his expiring deal has more value than the media is currently giving it. We will see how the dust settles but we’ve seen numerous “untradeable” contracts get moved over the years. I think a deal is out there that helps us without giving up first rounders.

 

is it because you don't care about any of the many statistics indicating his clear superiority and his being 6 years younger?

i don't want wall, and i never took any indy deal seriously.

 

It’s because I don’t think Rozier is that good of a player, he shrinks in the big moments.

I feel like where we differ is you assume the Westbrook we got last season is the one we will have moving forward. Whereas I hold out hope that last season was an aberration (is that the right use of that word?) and he can move back closer to his impact of the previous 5 years.

I know I’m probably a fool for that hope, but if it happens, that Westbrook is the best player available in any deal I’ve seen so far. And that’s how I get to my line of thinking.

 

If we can end up with a deal that brings back two or three guys out of Rozier, Hayward, Oubre or Washington, I’d do it even though Haywards injuries scare me and I’ve never liked Oubre (even going back to when he played for us at Kansas). Better fits and I’d like to see what Ham can do with them.

 

I would love to see Westbrook turn it around. Just hard to see how he could do that with LeBron and in a way that helps us win.

 

Rozier and Oubre will shrink in the LA spotlight, I like Hayward but he won’t be available in the playoffs if the last 5 years is any indication. And PJ is an ok player and not the sharpest tool in the shed, nothing much else.

 

We all know how he can be successful. He is a pseudo starter that plays as little with Lebron as possible (mainly to start the first quarter and close out the game). When they do share the court, Lebron gives up ball handling duties for 10-12 mins and let’s Russ run and gun, as well as set him up in half court. To close the game, we have Westbrook play similar to his time with Harden as the secondary attacker when Lebron ball fails (to do this we need 2 shooters on the floor alongside AD).

On top of that Westbrook needs to up his defence and really go after the marquee matchups.

The worst part about Westbrook is he has the ability but not necessarily the basketball IQ

 

yes, that's the correct usage. but for it to be an aberration, you have to point at what was aberrant about the context or player himself. to me, russ was himself, just another step slower. i don't think better health from AD or lebron fixes the problems russ created, so the only option is that vogel was keeping him down, which i highly doubt.

we have no reason to believe that rozier or whomever couldn't play here. and at this point i'll take a playoff flameout over a 12th place finish.

 

A couple of things I believe were an aberration:

His finishing cratered for the whole middle of the season, which I think is an outlier because he was finishing well to begin and end the year.

Russ is a high turnover guy, and he had moments during the season where he had a terrible run with turnovers followed by an extended run where he kept turnovers to career lows. The impact of this was his playmaking numbers were down across the board, his value comes from setting up his teammates. If he is overthinking turnovers he loses a lot of his value. So I think playing more freely again could help his playmaking. And we need a coaching staff that empowers this.

There were moments where I saw him check out of games defensively (Lebron too actually). Where they didn’t bother to make a rotation or go for a rebound. For someone who more often than not played with a high motor - this was quite odd to see. So I feel like the hustle plays were at career lows.

This isn’t an aberration, but we didn’t run much of anything for Russ or maximise his strengths, and I feel like we could add some things to improve his results here. One example of an adjustment by Vogel was the spacing during the last 10-15 games when Russ had the ball in half court. We’d load up the weak side and make sure there was no defenders outside of Westbrook’s peripheries so he could go into a post up. This was quite a high efficiency look for us and coincided with an uptick in Russ’ offensive revival.

 

I don’t think any of that group are world beaters.

I do think LeBron can work with them