Russell Westbrick Discussion: Clipper Gonna Clip

He's clearly not the same player athletically as this was what over 10 years ago. Also bringing up Embiid is ridiculous. One guy is now somewhat competent 6th man while the other is likely a good chance from being 1st team All NBA. I don't think anyone outside of Russ's brother think he's in the same caliber of guys you're trying to make him be

 

The point is who expected him to be the same guy from 10 years ago? Not the Lakers and none of those guys have done anything in the playoffs period. So again this Russ playoffs stuff is complete nonsense. Perhaps you were expecting more than I was.

 

Huh? I think he will be a total disaster in the playoffs: You're the one insinuating that he would be a positive in the playoffs.

 

Well..we shall most definitely find out who knows what on that subject this season.

 

lol, don't listen to me. i went from "we should extend him at 15-20 per" last year at this time to "get rid of him" over the summer to "we should extend him at 15-20 per" now.

 

The games will tell the story. Can't find any former teamates cosigning the media narrative about him though, after 14 seasons in the League. It will be interesting

 

what's the narrative? i haven't heard anyone say he's a bad guy. just that he's a bad player now. and while the move to the bench seems to have helped, he's still a pretty meh player in terms of impact.

iow, the games have definitely told a largely consistent story about his on-court value, imo. it's actually lower than even what i'm suggesting we sign him for.

 

narrative is he cant shoot and is a stat chaser.....i don't see any of that as being misleading. KD while being a moron in general also stated you cant win with Russ even with his triple dubs

 

I always felt that in KD’s eyes getting to the Warriors and away from (how) Russ (was always going to play the game) was a Win … Win.

 

Well, maybe. But at least Russ is not a little b**** like his old pal KD

 

Nah...folks seem to value a shooting percentage over assists, rebounding, pushing pace and being a locker room leader. Russ is a unique talent, hard to quantify by the usual metrics. For instance..consider this..This guy has more career rebounds, assists and points, than Scottie Pippen in less career games. Pippen is top 50 All Time.
https://www.statspros.com/russell-westbrook-vs-scottie-pippen-stats/#gsc.tab=0

The guy is more valuable to this current team than folks are willing to admit too. Everybody wants to focus on the negative but totally disregard the positives. It's not fair. No..he is NOT a 47 million dollar player, I totally agree on that point. However if Lebron and AD had shown up for work over these last two seasons, like Westbrook has, the Lakers would have been a much better team. I refuse to see that point otherwise either. We shall see how it plays this season. And...for the 200th time...Russell Westbrook is not getting traded!!!

 

He has been valuable this year in the role he's accepted. It's incumbent on him to be as often as possible a net plus on the floor for each game, which considering how good he still is when he's playing well, should be a slam dunk. BUT to do it consistently requires really limiting all the negative aspects that come along with the Russ experience at this stage of his career.

 

the team doesn't perform better when he's on the floor, slick. pretty much regardless of lineup configuration. winning is more important than counting assists and rebounds.

 

Russ still occasionally (often) has some boneheaded shot selection and turnovers. They can really hurt the momentum.

But on the other hand, he often swings the momentum in our favor by pushing the pace and finding guys for easy buckets.

I don’t see his assists and rebounds as “stat chasing”, I think they are usually legitimately beneficial to the team’s success.

Still want him gone.

 

Not true. We wouldn't have the wins we have now without Westbrook.

Again when I'm talking the ultimate judgment on Russ with this team, it's viewed through the lens on how he accented Lebron and AD. They still have to show up, a handful of games stretched among two seasons isn't a fair assessment. Hopefully that part gets eliminated this season, but we shall see.

 

Not mad at that perspective.

 

Not mad at this take either.

 

you know what; i went and looked at the data, and you're right. i was thinking of last year when it was hard to find workable lineups with russ. we've found some this year, now that he's accepted the bench role.

though i still contend that the impetus for the russ trade was precisely that we'd be better able to weather AD/lebron absences, which definitely hasn't been the case.

 

Can't argue with that either, I just saw it differently. Lebron eats PG IMO, he pretty much turns them into shooters/scorers. I just expected Anthony to be able to balance that out by being the focus of our offense. It hasn't worked out that way yet. I'm still hoping that it does, but I'm more optimistic than some.

I give credit to Darvin, he figured out early, that the best thing to do was to separate Lebron and Russ. Anthony is still the key to making that work too. We have 41 games left though!

 

Actually it kind of has if you look at our record digging out since/from the 2-10 start and the games we’ve won with just one of them plus the Miami game with neither.