Well he had just asked his girlfriend to marry him while they were in Greece and I imagine he had this planned for quite some time. Edit: Wow, I immediate regret reading the rest of the previous page. Greesy a**es will be in my dreams tonight.
Love this kid. Happy for him and his fiancé. Always good to see these players happy off the court. Now the real work begins and it starts tommorow.
I make no bones about it, I love the kid. He works hard and I think we'll see some improvements hopefully this year on both sides of the ball. If he can commit more on his help D, that's where he can be more like Draymond Green. I see their offensive strengths as pretty different, but if he models his help D off Green he could vastly improve from where he was last year. I am excited to see him playing under Walton's tutelage. If we do land Ingram today and a defensive minded Center in FA we can be much better defensively. Also I am just imagining Randle driving and kicking to Ingram for the outside shot.
I don't know that he'll ever be Green defensively (although I think he can be a very good defender), but I think an addition of a three pointer would make him already more dangerous offensively than Draymond. Draymond has been exposed more than once with his lack of a real offensive threat. He can hit an outside jumper now which opens up a lane for him to drive straight to the rim, but he doesn't have a true ability to create offense like Julius does. If Julius can knock down a three pointer 33% of the time next season, and he showed a better three ball than a mid-range shot actually last season, it opens up his game wildly. He's got a long way to go to get there, but hey so did Draymond. Julius showed some flashes of good one-on-one defense, but his help defense is abysmal. Hopefully a better coaching staff will get him more focused on that end. There's no reason Julius can't be a competent defender.
^...a better coaching staff is good start as defensively he has the mobility and physical skills to improve on. Randle has a better back to the basket/post up/face up game than Green even if does need some refinement. Green though has shown he has a good perimeter game. I like his shooting form...
Green has definitely developed a nice repeatable motion on his jumper. He didn't always have that though. Here's Green's breakdown: 12/13: 14/67 (20.9%) 13/14: 55/165 (33.3%) 14/15: 111/329 (33.7%) 15/16: 100/258 (38.8%) Julius's numbers: 14/15: n/a 15/16: 10/36 (27.8%) It's possible for him to become a respectable shooter out there, he just has to work on it. I have faith that he will.
Agree, realdeal, Julius won't ever be Green on D. Green just loves and thrives on playing D - it's where he hangs his hat. Julius has always been more of an offensive minded player and he can be a pretty unstoppable one at times as we've seen. But like we both said, if Julius can implement some of the help defense that Green learned up in GS that would be HUGE. I believe he can. I've seen him switch on PG's and SG's and he shows some pretty good instincts out there on the perimeter against smaller players. He's even gotten steals on some guards when switched. But the main area he needs help on his switching is under the rim where he's pretty terrible. It's like he just doesn't see what people are doing. He needs to raise his awareness down low on D in a major way and get over quicker. I think he has the ability, the size and the quickness but he doesn't have any instincts for it at all. That's where coaching comes in. Agreed that a three point shot opens things up immensely for Randle. His form looks better out there than mid-range which usually goes long. From three he looks a little more natural. If he gets the three point shot together he and Ingram can trade off driving and kicking. That would be insane. And agreed with GCC, Randle has much better post play than Green even if he's still raw.
If we're gonna start Randle next to a Whiteside type of player, we're going to need A LOT of spacing. Additionally, these two should be rebound vacuums both defensively AND offensively. If the Flippers can get away with Blake and Deandre in the paint together, we should be able to also.
It's just a matter of repetition and finding his spots. I'm confident in Julius's ethic and our new staff's ability to find his strengths. He's nearly 50% from the left wing on 3's. Small sample size but I think he could make 33% of them if he got more looks. If Julius can fill out the bottom 1/3 of that shot chart with a handful more blue, he'll be a much deadlier player and the Lakers will be a deadlier team.
You can clearly see that his off-hand sucks around the rim. He also still isn't good enough at shooting. If he cannot nail that 18 footer with ease, he will never be close to a star. He can't compete with size, he needs to utilize speed but thats only happening if he gets the defender to come out, which they don't have to right now.
I'm with you. His three point shot actually looked pretty smooth in games. It looked much smoother than his mid-range shot. I have great faith he'll be able to shoot a little more effectively this season. I know he looks up to Draymond and that's certainly one of the next steps in his offense. I think he'll do great.
