^ that's the first thing that crossed my mind. We're one injury away (Kobe, Lin, Young... when he's back) from keeping that pick.
irony: i went to bad at halftime, knowing what was going to happen. i watched the third quarter on dvr, and then, inexplicably, my dvr cuts out. i plan to post in this thread with something like "hey, the upside is that with all the garbage time minutes available this year, we should get a good look at randle". fml. i suppose the good news that randle didn't just spontaneously combust. or that the thunder didn't trade Durant to the lakers for Jordan hill and Jeremy lin before the game, only to have david stern come out of retirement to veto the deal. at least that didn't happen.
The only thing positive I can think of is that we should get the top 5 pick. Got a growing feeling we are going to have to do this rebuild the hard way through the draft.
^ with how the things go lately... don't be surprised if we end up 6th-7th. Few good games from Kobe or Nick at the end of the season and bye bye rookie .
I can't root against my own team again. Last year I fell into that after a certain point because I was so disgusted with D' Antoni and wanted him fired at all costs and figured if we are going to lose go ahead and get the best draft pick possible. There is no way on earth that I want this team playing so poorly that they get the fifth pick. Unless they play so poorly that they are going to end up with the sixth pick. Then sure, throw in the towel. But I am really hoping we are not that bad this year. I want us to do as well as we can not as poorly as possible. I'm still hoping we fight for a playoff spot but without Randle I doubt we'll get there. He was the one guy with a huge ceiling, the one player besides Kobe who has the talent to completely excel far beyond expectation. I may be putting too much on the rookie, but we all saw those glimpses in pre-season of his monster talent. Going to be tough for us to recover a lot of optimism given the emotional loss of Randle. There is something so deflating and saddening about seeing a youngster get hurt in this way that takes them out of the season. You never feel good about a vet going down either, but a kid who just played his very first game in the NBA and seemed to have sky high potential? It's a kick in the jewels for sure. The Lakers vet leaders like Kobe and Booz were mentoring Julius and now you also lose that very empowering and enriching role for them. A little bit of the joy of our squad just got wheeled off the floor last night. It cast a bit of a dark shadow. Let's see if the squad and Byron can rise above. I hope so.
Not much to be optimistic about right now. The season could not have started much worse than that. Every time you think this team has hit their lowest point, something like this happens. Davis looked good. Kobe looked good. That's all I've got right now.
Well now it's all about the development of Clarkson, and to a lesser extent Kelly...( if he ever gets on the court) for me. Maybe those two guys will give me a reason to watch as this tough season unfolds.
^ LIn and Davis too. If they can develop a rapport and some chemistry, they could be part of our future moving forward.
This thread is already making me feel better. Either we're going to end up with that top 5 pick, or we're going to surprise a ton of people without Randle. I forgot that we have Kelly, and Davis seems to be a bright spot. Surely, everyone was already counting out the Lakers, and now? They will be dogging them even more. Maybe this type of adversity will bring this group closer together...maybe we rise above all of this? There's going to be 100s of articles about why the Lakers shouldnt have taken Randle and how bad we are and this and that....now Kelly has to step up. Now Davis has to step up. Now Boozer will play more. It's going to be a collective effort....maybe Kobe gets back to his 2012 self and goes insane. Who knows? All I knwo is..i'll NEVER stop supporting this squad. As tough as its been the last 3 years....some teams go through 10 year periods of nothing...or 20 years...or 30...we gotta just stick by our team and hope that Randle recovers 100% and he doesnt have any recurring injury problems...
I'm still numb. I had been gone all night missing most of the game, I turn on the tv to catch up and see Randle down. I overhear the guys say it might have been the achilles, but finally reported it was a broken leg. If Worthy can suffer the same injury in his rookie year, and still play at the Hall of Fame level he did, then to me, it's not as bad as it will seem. It could have been worse.
Oh yeah, forgot about the top 5 pick, we are definitely getting that unless there's a crazy bad ping pong ball bounce.
