*Click bait* "According to one league source" "some Lakers have been frustrated by the play of Julius Randle" So we should rely on Frank Isola's reports of a guys that doesn't get anywhere near the team....okay. I mean I know we're an easy target these days, but
BLo is the only guy that really has New York roots...but I don't see him really snitching on Randle, cause he was injured so why would he care? Isola probably has no iota of truth to this article. You can easily misrepresent that source with the players upset in Randle's minutes in that they believed he deserved more. Connecting the dots, Bogut brought up that there was a locker room problem publicly. It became a story and the team had a meeting. Then it was brought up that guys are upset with the upcoming summer and how it impacts them. So the FO looks bad in all of this. They lay down the hammer, Bogut is gone and they put a positive spin on it as trying to get him to a contender. Meanwhile we've been hearing that we already got a deal in place for JC and we can swing that at the end of the year. JC probably wants to get that done right away. So that's left TBD. As for Randle, his minutes have been reduced leading to a statistical efficiency we haven't seen from him till this year. He's featured in a small ball 5 role. Then he's recently featured as a starter. Then last game, he's featured in a starting 4 role that he's been accustomed to the last couple years. You look at that and can't help but think dude is being featured for a trade and here are the many roles he can play in. Finally add the recent noise revolving around Deng and how LA is adamant that they won't part with multiple draft picks to dump him....and folks, need I mention the trade deadline is only a month away?
Very, very strong game from Randle tonight. Shot 60%, made life miserable for ZBo on the other end (held him to 2 for 12 shooting = 16%!!), and set up Lopez over and over for those open threes. The numbers were outstanding as tada mentioned. Julius looked really good once again with the starters. I really enjoy our starters with Randle in the mix going up by double digits in the first quarter versus the endless number of times they began games down by double digits with Nance in the starting lineup. So much better. I hope this quells some of the trade talk. We have no other big who does what Randle does out there. He's been great as a starter.
He is of course our only tough enforcer type player not afraid to mix it up on the team with the body to back it up.
He's our most statistically productive player, but best? Not sure about that. I still probably give the nod to Ingram at this point. Randle does so many dumb momentum killing things the stat sheet doesn't show. Not saying he's not one of our 2-3 best players, nor am I saying he shouldn't be playing more. But he makes some very ill-timed mistakes.
I think that's fair Savory. Even last night with a monster game Randle still lost the plot several times and had a team high 6 turnovers. The thing that always bugged me was that Randle was being so dismissed by most of the folks on this board. Now I think even the most staunch anti-Randle people have to admit that he's improved greatly defensively, has proven that he can play small ball 5 extremely well, and that he's our best big. He's a game changer and there was no good reason to keep him on the bench playing 20 a game while our starters were looking like garbage for the first third of the season.
Agreed. He has surprised the heck out of me on defense. It's too bad we are so dead set on trying to clear two max slots cause I'd love to keep Randle. This plan is either going to be awesome or disastrous. I don't see much in between.
I'm not trying to take anything away from Randle's great game, but I still don't think he's a small ball 5. I definitely think his one on one defense at the PF has always been great, and his pick and roll defense has improved, but I can't rely on his as the anchor in the paint or going up against legitimate 5's like Embiid, KAT, Nurkic, Gasol...etc. He just doesn't have the size to defend those guys, as hard as he tries. If teams go small, then he definitely slides into that role, but we need a true anchor in the paint to get stops down the stretch. Too many times we've traded baskets against teams with legit 5's because we were going small.
Did you watch the game? He played like a complete buffoon half the time. He should have had 30-40 points and 20 rebs
