D'Angelo Russell Discussion: Adopting A Professional Attitude

Must be that new Dinwiddie money that got his veins boiling.

Either way, the Nets are playing really well right now and you know Dlo has the Laker game circled. We need to come correct tomorrow.

 

very curious to see how zo fares defending russell and dinwiddie, one of whom is generally a problem for the opposition on a given night.

 

Still hate this trade with a passion...but D-Lo imo was never going to be a superstar anyway....and his D sucks...but then again...Zo is never going to be a superstar either and he literally can't shoot...not sure who i'd rather have at this point...

 

Zo and it's not even close. I'd rather have Hart over DLo too. Not to mention we ended up getting Kuzma for him in that trade.

 

yeah, i haven't come around on it, either. i just didn't want to trade russell for cap space. i don't want to trade ball or ingram for cap space, either, mind you. but i agree that neither ball nor ingram can really claim to have shown more than russell at this point. off the court, russell concerned me, but on the court, he's produced ok given his age, experience, and even draft position.

anyway, clearly the FO didn't think much of him, so here we are. same with randle. did we lose allstars? no. but did we need to lose starting-caliber players? probably not.

 

First off, respect to Trav's guy...he outballed our guy last night. And then that dagger 3 to seal the game had me all in my feelings...

However, I still don't mind the trade one bit tho...kuz LABron...duh.

Even with a buyout stretch & waive of Deng @14.5m, Moz at @16m and DLo @7m that right there is 37m which would take up Bron's 35.7m cap hit.

Even if you remove Kcp, 'Do and Lance's 25.5m cap hit, that wouldn't be enough to offer Bron a max...even if we stretched Moz in a similar fashion to Deng.

All this is not even considering Jules's 12.4m caphold.

Sorry @abeer3 but getting off Moz using one of our assets was necessary to bring in Bron. Losing DLo at a chance for Bron and then using that Klutch konnect to potentially bring in another is a path I choose 10/10 times.

 

i'm too lazy to go look at the balance sheet, but i thought we had in excess of 50 million to spend this summer. moz could have been moved for lower salary on a longer deal, and russell could have been moved for future draft picks. or both may have been moved jointly for a starting caliber nba player making less than the two of them combined (very possible, imo) and allowing for a max offer.

lots of ways; management just didn't like dlo and was super confident about the use of that space.

getting fully clear of moz was only necessary if we wanted two maxes, which ended up being kind of a waste, with most of the other theoretical max going to guys who aren't helping us win.

 

Let's say we remained as is:

Jules 12.4m cap hold
JC/Nance 14.8m
Moz/DLo 23m
= 50.2m

Let's say Deng still agreed to the buyout = 14.5m
Zo, BI, Hart or Kuz (cause pre-BK trade we had the 28th pick), Zu, Moe, Svi, Bonga = 20.8

Total team salary = 85.5m
Cap space = 16.5m

Bron's max: 35.7m; so we'd be far and away from his max slot had we not dumped Moz.

Let's say we stretched both Moz and Deng without a buyout then their combined 69.5m remaining salary over the next 2 years would be stretched to be a combined 13.9m dead cap hit per year for the next 5 years. Doing that would have given us an additional 16.6m in cap for a total of about 33m in cap space... Which would still not be enough to max out Bron.

Clearing Moz was to create enough cap for a 30% max player. But the Nance/JC trade was done to get us to a 35% max player and to have the ability to match a reasonable offer sheet for Jules if Bron was taking too long to decide. We had room for 2 max players only if we stretched Deng and either renounced Jules or had him come back and agree to an expiring 1yr QO deal of 5.6m.

You begin to appreciate just how much of Mitch & Jimmy's mess Magic & Rob have had to clean up.

 

not going to belabor, but droppoing jules (like we did anyway) and moving off 2/3 of jc/nance salary (no problem) would have done it.

anyway, my point isn't that i wish dlo were still here; it's always been that i wish he'd been moved for talent instead of space.

 

probably a good call

but on this front, I thought he looked a little different



Oh where oh where did the innocence go?

 

One of the complaints against DLO was he was all about the NBA life, but not so much about working on his game. I don't know if that falls into this category or not, but when the kid is on, he can make the game look smooth and easy. Like everyone, I hope they get the most out of their talent and work to be the best version of themselves. Only DLO knows that answer, but hopefully he thrives in his new place.

Except when playing us of course.

 

He's having a good year...he's still never going to be a superstar...but what if I'm wrong? What if he leads the Nets to the playoffs?

What we need to look at is this: Is D-Lo better than Zo? the answer is an emphatic YES.

Will Zo end up better than D-Lo? I think so...but it may take some time...D-Lo was actually more in line with LeBron's timeline than Zo is because D-Lo can actually hit shots and create for himself. Zo can't do either.

 

*raises hand*

you need to be able to shoot and/or play off the ball to thrive with lebron. part of that is because lebron doesn't do/like to do either of those things particularly well, but he's kinda the best player in the league, so you roll with him and not the others with the same playing style. the lebron/wade pairing was always less than the sum of the parts for that reason, imo. and ingram's not wade.

i thought kuz would look great with lebron, and slowly, he's starting to do that. if zo got his longball down, he'd be great next to lebron.

and yes, i think dlo would fit nicely next to lebron as the kind of score-first pg that has had success there (mo williams, kyrie).

 

If only he stuck to that slashing role he showed in preseason. For whatever reason the coaching staff or front office want him to be an iso scorer. Shrugs.