Russell Westbrick Discussion: Clipper Gonna Clip

He definitely has mamba mentality on that. Kobe just happened to be muuuuuuu(...)uuuuuuuuuuch better.

 

1st glance ^^^ yesterday I thought it was Jimmy Carter.

 

Magic is pissed

 

Who cares?

He doesn't have an any officially capacity with this organization.

He needs to go fix his Dodgers

 

He has a Jersey up in the rafter, where's yours?

 

True. He also willingly sabotaged the Lakers for a period of time after he publicly and out of the blue quit on them in the tunnel before a last game or so. Pelinka with his knife in front of our most important off season in which Rob had to do the AD trade and also pursue Snake.

 

Exactly. TY

 

surprised we're still doing this, but magic the player was great and fun and foundational. magic the coach/gm/president whatever was an epic dumpster fire. just horrific. he'll never work in this business again for good reason. but he can be mad as a fan just like we are; that's fine.

none of us traded for mike muscala, though.

 

He was a savior at the outset taking the reigns from Jim to put respect and charisma back into the company and a big plan starting with landing for certain LeBron coming to the Lakers. Square one but it was a HUGE square one and we have to give him that.

 

i have serious questions about his role in getting lebron (i think lebron decides what lebron does, always). though i do think his voice helped get us out of the jim buss era, which, no doubt, was HUGE, as indicated.

anyway, this is the russ thread, and as i said in another, my offer has lowered:

3yrs/60 million if you agree to a) opt out and b) play off the bench for 25mpg. just suck it up and deal with it. be a fun, inconsistent bench sparkplug and hug your kids way more often. if you opt in for the 47, i WILL ship you out, and it will likely be to like, orlando.

 

I just flashed on his hundreds of blown layups and thought back to him flexing and mean mugging in the summer, practicing his layups at 3/4 speed with the weird “being batted by foam paddles on sticks” wielded by the 3 or 4 dudes he was flexing and mean mugging at.

 

That’s the “Triple Double” method of training.

 

It bothers me a little bit when people say Westbrook doesn't sacrifice or adjust his game. It's one thing to say he has been lousy and he should be benched, but it's a totally different thing saying he isn't trying to adjust.

He has played with so many different players in so many different systems - and has always adjusted his game to suit. Even this year with the Lakers, he has his lowest shot attempts and usage since his second season. He drastically cut down on threes when asked to adjust, and raised his defence recently. And now he is being asked to not cause turnovers, so he has given up a ton of his playmaking role to make that happen.

The thing we haven't asked Westbrook to do, is to just let it rip and go full usage mode. I'm not saying we should, but if he wasn't willing to adjust or sacrifice, he wouldn't be playing so controlled.

 

It's true what you're saying. Hell, in the past 5 games he made 0TOs three times and 1 once.

I just think he's not able to play winning basketball. He's not smart, is a bad defender and his inability to shoot hurts the team.
Rondo had the same issues late in his career, bad shooting and defense, but manages to compensate that by actually starting to shoot better and a huge basketball IQ.

I also think Russ presence is hurting the team at the moment.

 

i think this was directed at me, and maybe it's semantics, but i still don't see "sacrifice". if what that means is "not playing a style that's obviously detrimental to the team" then it's not sacrifice in my book. nor is adjusting your game and being obviously disengaged by it. again, i'd argue the guy who's adjusted and sacrificed the most is AD.

more importantly--i don't think you're "sacrificing" if you play as poorly as he has in terms of team defense. there's just not an excuse for it. if he was killing himself on that end, i wouldn't be complaining about him, even with the bad offense. but you can't tell me you're laying it all out there when i can see that footage.

 

At this point, it’s all on the coaching staff to force him to play good team defense. If he doesn’t show a willingness to sacrifice on that end, he shouldn’t play. The fact that I even have to type this about him shows just how selfish he really is. I’m tired of all the baseless excuses. We are an awful defensive team and there are no excuses for any player who refuses to buy into the concept of team defense.