Austin is clearly our third best player. When ANT comes here because of Austin we will be glad he played for team USA. Short-term sacrifice for the greater good.
Wow is that simulator technology so developed that’s not just some random call? They really got excited like it was the real deal.
I like Austin, and he addressed our Quota needs, but he has to go. https://chatgpt.com/share/ac3be48b-0656-4635-bcc8-552b9624fbef I asked Chat GPT to rank our players against their peers so I could see how they stood out. It picked our 4 starters since they were the only ones with enough minutes to do this kind of comparison. Then I asked it to rank them by defense advanced statistics Now, although there is a little overlap in data since the first graph includes some defense related stats, I asked it to combine their ranking against their peers in one graph as if those two reports were equally weighted. so while I love me some Austin Reaves, I am NOT IN LOVE with Austin Reaves now, and if he must be moved in order for the team to really improve, I think we must now consider it. He's the 20th best player at his position, and the worst ranked out of those 4 players including DLO. In fact, if you had to lose one of either DLO or Austin, it actually should be Austin, and that surprises me. This is data only, not the eye test. Not locker room presence, not intangibles. But if you had to put a defensive specialist out there next to either one of these guys, is it better to replace DLO or Austin? It's a close call, but apparently Austin loses out on strictly data. Oh, and how does AD score so great on Defense advanced metrics, but get so little props? I guess we should ask @LTLakerFan his pro bono attorney.
yeah, in a vacuum, dlo is probably a better player than reaves. but reaves makes less and doesn't fully wet the bed in the playoffs. reaves is a huge value on his contract, and that's why he's semi-untouchable. dlo's making a little under his real value (they're both 18-20m per players on the open market, imo), but it's undercut by his repeated playoff issues.
Breaking up the back court bros will be a little sad either way, but if we have peaked based upon the combination, I hope the team is ready to go in a fruitful direction. And Austin flat out needs to be better. I'm glad he's not playing the Olympics this year and won't come into next season tired. And I also consider this: Ham was a crappy coach. He did not know how to help his players succeed. He did not know how to game plan to accentuate their positives or hide their weaknesses. Would we be as irritated with Ham if he schemed some screens to get DLO good looks instead of just judge him for not being able to get open and clean looks by himself? Did we take advantage of Reaves strengths hardly at all? That moron benched each one of these guys during the year. Maybe a good coach comes in and convinces management they both need to stay, but be used differently. I'm all ears.
i just mentioned it in the other thread, but benching reaves made some sense to me (i wouldn't call it benching--using him off the bench). it was benching dlo that i didn't understand when it happened. with reaves, it seemed strategic and fit-based. with dlo, it seemed like punishment. and ham's recent comments kind of suggest it was. that was the wrong button to push there.
Problem with that analysis @sirronstuff is it doesn’t take into account the Lakers scheming holistically. The NBA is overloaded with incredibly skilled guards and the Lakers chose to have Austin cover the best starting guard on the opposing team nearly every time. DLO got whichever guard was less mobile and less explosive. That’s a hole in the roster construction, not Austin’s fault. So the problem wasn’t that Austin sucks as a defender. It’s that neither Austin or DLO are good defenders, but Austin was better overall, so he got the harder cover. Put Austin on the worst starting guard and he’s not going to be an incredible defender, but he’d be more than serviceable.
Yeah, statistics alone will never get it done. I really wish we had a better coach to really have a good feel of what our next steps should be. We're left with way too many questions marks after the Ham experience.
Well to be fair here, D'Angelo was only benched for 7 games total, and we went 4-3 in those 7 games. That's not exactly an indication of a terrible decision. We were 3-4 in his previous 7 starts before being benched, and had lost 3 out of 4.
Austin isn’t a great defender, but he’s a very good offensive player for the money. I’m in total agreement that he would have had a better year under a coach who actually helped to improve his player’s production on the court, instead of constantly looking for ways to remove their confidence by benching them while they are struggling. This was a very strange season- mostly because our awful coach pretended that he was just thrown all new players and didn’t have a strong run the previous season WITH THE SAME PLAYERS. Moronic, idiotic, and inexcusable coaching. I still can’t believe how much this guy sandbagged his own team and took Zero responsibility. I hope he becomes the C Bags next coach.
D'Angelo realized that he wasn't getting traded, and started playing better. The record was what it was though. Meh..it's still the Jimmies and Joe's, not the x's and o's in my book. Unless you go 10-31. Russell has come up small for every coach that's he's played for, that's not all on Ham. I really don't expect that to change with a new coach. Austin played like crap for awhile..that's also true. Going to the bench revitalized his game IMO TBH..I still think he's better coming off the bench today.
