2022-23 Team Developments: News / Trades / Free Agents / Rumors

…. forgot last “period”.


JK

 

It’s impressive how connected Russ has been to the lakers off season, he has been the one constant - ham’s press conference, Bev’s press conference, daily workouts with the youngins.

For someone who is meant to be a bad egg, his professionalism is welcome. If he does stay, I hope he changes his game and the team comes out hot in the first 20 games.

It’s just a shame we don’t have a 3&D wing to slot in with Russ, Bev, Lebron and AD otherwise we might have had something interesting.

 

nothing more than a**-kissing to try and avoid being traded probably

 

You’d think he would probably want to be traded after all the vitriol shown to him by the fans and media. Even comments like yours… shows how clouded peoples judgment is with him when they can’t even appreciate his professionalism in the face of everything that’s happened.

 

eh, i wish a shred of that professionalism showed up on the court or in his comments to the press throughout last year.

 

Westbrook's MO for his entire career has been one as a top notch professional, in the manner in which he carries himself. That's not a surprise, it's been repeated every where he's played by the FO. It's weird that his public personality is so much different , than the way he is in person around the team. I just don't think he and Frank ever got off on the right foot and things deteriorated quickly. However Austin echoed some of the same things you keep hearing about Russ..great teammate, always positive towards the team, and you couldn't tell that he and Vogel had some kind of beef by the way Russ interacted with the players.

Tighten up on those FT, and layups tho Brodie!! I think Russ is going to have a strong bounce back season.

 

I’m not counting on it, but our only hope for this season is that contract year Russ has heard all the noise and learned that he’ll need to adjust and actually sacrifice if he wishes to have a future in this league.

The professionalism through the off-season, despite being in dozens of trade rumors and being iced out by the team leader at summer league, is a good starting point.

But he’s gotta show the same professionalism via adjusting his on-court performance, and he has to keep the professionalism during the inevitable up’s and downs of the season. He can’t afford to have any public passive aggression towards Ham the way he did with Vogel.

Never going to happen, but I still think the best thing for both the team and Russ himself would be for him to publicly embrace a sixth man role.

His path towards a nice contract next year isn’t going to be by getting a bunch of triple doubles as a high usage starter. His best bet is to demonstrate that he can sacrifice and still be productive in bursts as a roleplayer.

 

How quickly some of you forgotten his exit interview.

 

Idk..the narrative is about Westbrook adjusting his game. I'm a bit perplexed as to what exactly. I keep watching these games again from last season, and I have to agree with Gilbert Arenas on a lot of his takes on Russ. Vogel didn't know WTF he was doing for most of the season. Some of these lineups were just terrible . The dude deferred to Lebron immediately and a bit too much IMO. So I'm not getting the "Thinking that he's a high usage first option" stuff. He gave up the rock to Lebron and just seemed lost as to what he was supposed to do afterwards, more than anything to me. Vogel did make some adjustments at the end by posting Russ up and sending the young guys cutting to the basket a lot more. Helped their games and Westbrook's too. Waited way too late to do that IMO.

Bron is going to be Bron..he's not going to change up much IMO besides maybe launching more 3, as opposed to barreling into the paint. The key to the fit is AD, P&R action with Russ and AD, while James plays that " shooters " role weakside. James was about equal to Buddy Hield last season from 3 with volume. We just never got those guys on the court together enough.

 

Vogel needed to be thrown under the bus. That's why he got fired..Lol. Folks act like Frank didn't suck all season He got what he deserved, maybe not in the manner they let him go, but he definitely needed to go. .He wasn't wrong about James not adjusting to anything either. Nobody questions Lebron. That said..he let his emotions get to him and let it rip.

 

Thank you

 

^^^ ....( man I had no idea what the coach wanted from me, Dude never once talked to me)

 

Another sighting above of WBRA. World's Biggest Russ Apologist.

 

Naw..keeping it real man. Your man Frank sucked last season, he got fired for a reason. Lebron did whatever he wanted to, and coasted more than I've ever seen him on D. Somebody needed to say that s***. out loud. I'm pretty sure what he really wanted to say, was that Lebron and AD recruited him, got him to ask for a trade the Wizards declined twice, and then they failed to show up for work, while he gets all the blame. James asked for an AD trade in the locker room on camera lol..now folks mad at Westbrook for speaking his mind? He does have to deliver the goods this season tho, Darvin has caught his back, it's all on him moving forward.

 

Sure as hell looked exactly just like that to me. Even Frank said that the " plan" never got in place, because of all the injuries. I don't think that man lied on Frank. Vogel never refuted it either .

 

As if Frank’s going to get down in the mud after that exit interview to do that.

Funny how all the same blah blah blah 800 times about LeBron and AD not being on the floor OR Nunn AND the rest of that Crap lineup excuses Russ but no slack for Frank having to deal with that non available, non defending, non shooting mess with Russ’s uncooperative attitude from day one (the non agreement about others bringing the ball up the floor if they rebounded) and him getting pissed in film sessions …. PLUS his entitled garbage play.

 

Because if you go back and actually watch some of these games again, in spite of everything mentioned above, Frank still bungled his way through key stretches of games and that cost us wins. That is why he got fired, everyone was aware of the injury situation. It was more to it than just that when the FO assessed his performance.

The other stuff..a PG wants the ball? Who knew? That's some minor crap, cooperation on what? There wasn't any damn plan to cooperate on LT..lol..that was the problem. All season Frank's standard was " Wait until we get Lebron and AD back! We're going be right there!"

Never happened, it's possible that it could have saved him though. He adjusted some to Russ at the end.