Russell Westbrick Discussion: Clipper Gonna Clip

Nothing wrong in recognizing the supporter cast around Bron and AD isn't very good .

I said I was concerned about the Westbrook fit because of :

- his flaws as a player AND because Vogel isn't a good offensive coach .

 

Aaaaaaand the overreaction has activated..........

 

whats unwarranted? hes terrible fit. simple as that

 

Bron gets it.

Russ is tougher on himself than all the overreaction here. He's the most competitive NBA player since Kobe (Dame nipping at Russ' heels). A lot was on him in that first game. He's a very slow starter in new teams and that dumped 10 pounds of gasoline on it. We knew this. Stats confirm this. The team told us to expect this. It's going to take time.

He looked bad. He'll look better. And health permitting, I think we'll look great by February.

 

I hate his game but there is no way he is going to be effective with two bigs no matter how creative one gets:



This would be comical how much GS literally is inviting the screen and racing to go under if it wasn't the same damn thing the Lakers did to Westbrook in the bubble.

Post up makes sense: put pressure on Steph


Also he should be incredible in the Bruce Brown role: he's just better passer/dribbler/etc then Brown



He's a big on offense and the sooner the Lakers learn that the better they can gauge what they can be become or not

 

Here's what AD had to say, not as poetic as Bron's comments, but still pretty good...



THE ATHLETIC

 

I posted every lineup/rotation from last night's game in the Depth Chart thread. My big takeaway from that was that Russ's terrible -23 wasn't just one bad stretch, there were 3 separate occasions in 3 separate quarters where a Russ lineup went down 6-10 points in just 2-3 minutes.

On the other hand, every time Russ was out, the team won or was breakeven. Every single time. They blew the Warriors out by 16 when Russ was off the court.

And the big difference when a Russ lineup got blown out, or was okay, wasn't due to 2 bigs on the floor, they were actually breakeven when Russ played together with 2 bigs.

The absolutely atrocious lineup blowouts were when Russ, Monk, and Melo played together. Especially with Rondo next to them. The terrible defense just killed the Lakers in those stretches.

End of 1Q: Lakers got outscored 11-4 in 2 min
End of 3Q: Lakers got outscored 7-1 in 2 min
Start of 4Q: Lakers got outscored 15-5 in 3.5 min
These 3 stretches: Lakers got outscored 33-10 in less than 8 min

 

I agree i don't think he had a good stretch but it was the end of the 3rd quarter/beginning of the 4th that cost the Lakers: he was a whopping -16 fro that stretch

http://popcornmachine.net/gf?date=20211019&game=GSWLAL

 

bron just wanted someone to take the ball handling duties away from him and he got it in westbrook. i highly doubt "will he fit?" was something that was floated around. they acquired him on talent alone

he won't play that bad every night. it's just a matter of time before they figure out how to utilize him properly

 

Westbrook shooting is the reason the fit will never work imo, yes he wont have bad nights like this all the time but plain and simple if the team doesnt play Russ ball (whatever that is) it wont work, hes doesnt have the ability to play off ball and the offense doesnt cater to his style either

 

yeah, dantoni wasn't wrong about that, but the answer wasn't to go with no one who could defend inside. luckily, we have AD, though.

this is the analysis for which i am here.

this is really important. we fans (or at least I) have said for years that the ideal lebron pg is someone who can shoot the lights out and doesn't need to handle to be effective (like mo williams was in cleveland or like say, kemba walker might have been here and now), but lebron clearly wants a pg. he wanted rondo. he wanted westbrook. he wants the ball out of his hands some. sort of like AD wants to play the 4. just have to live with it all.

 

Where you been? We've been waiting for you to step in here.

 

I'll address it in tonight's podcast. I don't post as much because I better articulate what I need to say in live words. And even better in person.

 

I’m just not sure how people expect a brand new roster to get a top defence humming and have an effective offence in a matter of weeks.

Then we compare ourselves to Golden State who have some incredible continuity and an established system that all of Curry, Green, Wiggins, Poole, Lee, Looney, Iguodola and Toscano know. They only had 2 new rotation players from last year.

It was clear to me that our defence isn’t there yet and our offence isn’t close. And yet we were still in it with Russ having a terrible game. It’s easy to scape goat a player and throw the baby out with the bath water. And it’s easy to say it’s a terrible fit and going to be an awful season and blah blah blah.

Let’s see where we are at the end of December. That’s when we’ll know the answer to these questions, certainly not after a preseason and the first game of the new season.

 

I’ve heard a lot of 2004 and 2012 references.

2004 we made the finals.

To me this isn’t anything like 2012.

To mirror 2012 we need three career ending injury’s. That’s like Lebron (elder statesman like Nash) breaking his kneecap in the first game and having serious nerve damage in what became a career ending injury. It would be like AD having major back (young big like Dwight) surgery in the off-season and just not being the same MVP caliber player he was before. Then we’d have Westbrook carrying us like Kobe before he suffers a career ending injury too.

Even with all that we were the best performing teams in the league for the last quarter of the season. If Kobe didn’t get injured we probably would of made the Conference Finals and lost to OKC.

 

So maybe I was wrong with advocating him playing with the bench unit lol
Sounds like playing him with Bradley and Baze to cover for him maybe a better option. Easier to survive with monk and rondo when AD is the backline?
Lots of parts to figure out here without Nunn/THT/Ariza available

 

And then there’s this. A. Either all of the Westbrook detractors are knee jerk over reacting on his early performance with the Lakers by calling him a low IQ player. Or B. Rajon Rondo has been overrated in how intelligently he actually sees things …. and pulls no punches letting people know what he’s thinking on the floor in the moment. (such as with Snake in the playoffs last year and with clocking Chris Paul the year before )

Excerpted from @JSM ’s post of the Athletic piece in Rondo’s thread, on current state of AD and Rajon and the team:

“Russ is an extremely smart guy, and it won’t take him long to pick it up,” Rondo said. “Obviously, he’s an established player, so he’ll get the time and he’ll get the chemistry. It does take time, but at the same time, he’s a quick learner. If you show Russ something once, he’ll pick it up right away. And understand, he’s an unselfish guy. Plays the right way. A.D.’s not going to complain too often about not getting the ball, because if he does, I usually just tell him go get it off the glass. Get it off the glass on both ends of the floor, and you create your points that way.”