D'Angelo Russell Discussion: Adopting A Professional Attitude

played every game for the wolves this season and now can't stay healthy ever since becoming a laker

because of course

 

Being cautious on a contract year. Helps us because it keeps his asking price from going into another bracket.

 

Just wondering what kind of hip problem? Did he take a fall on it in practice or somehow tweak a muscle or ligament? And yes it’s bad news / good news in that it’s annoying as **** that we need him for these important games and don’t know what the heck the injury is or the timeline for return BUT as well this should in fairness ding him on any big starting raise from where his salary is now if Lakers are planning on keeping him. Personally I want no part of Kyrie or his even bigger salary.

 

So DLO will continue to be a p**** if the Lakers make the playoffs and still sit out games if he is sore due to a contract year.

 

pretty sure this won't affect his agent's asking price (max), but it will dampen the pressure from the fanbase for rob to meet it.

i stick with "if you're hurt; you're hurt and you don't play". and again, i view how we deal with lebron, AD, and russell as investments in next year. let's not force one of them into an unnecessary surgery because we wanted a higher position in the play-in. that's incredibly short-sighted, imo.

edit: i even think that AD choosing which back-to-back he plays was some real b*******. you either can or can't play back to backs, imo. it's not like you can play just one a month. show me the evidence for such a specific claim. and that's not on AD so much as the training/medical staff. do you believe that one can play in back to backs? what are the laws governing your game-by-game availability choices?

 

He needs to f***ing play these last 7 games. Period.

No more p**** a** s***

 

I agree that making AD choose was some serious bull s***. I could see medical staff telling coaching staff that a player can only play 1 back-to-back if there are several back-to-backs close together, like what if there were games on March 14 & 15, then only 1 day rest, then games on March 17 & 18. 4 games in 5 days might be way too much.

But that wasn't the case here. The next set of back-to-backs was a full 3 weeks away, that's a lot of time. The coaching staff should have just had AD play against Houston (and try to get an early blowout and limit his minutes), and then would have had plenty of time to evaluate how AD was responding and if it would be fine to play the April 4 & 5 back-to-back.

Furthermore, who knows where the standings will be at that point in time. The April 5 game is the 3rd to last of the season. At this point, it looks like it will come down to the wire. But back on March 15, it was possible that the Lakers could be firmly in 5th/6th and not need to worry too much about the last couple games of the season. Or they could have gone the other way and sadly been out of the play in regardless of the last few games. It was really stupid to pre-determine on March 15 that they didn't need AD that game, but would definitely need him on April 5. It would have been much smarter to just play him against Houston, and then see what happens and figure the rest out later when you have more information.

 

Yep. Bunch of morons these people are.

 

Is he playing tomorrow? I haven't seen anything yet but I swear he better f***ing play man.

 

don't like the amorphous "sore hip" that keeps you out of important games. makes me nervous.

 

Boston and Isiah Thomas saga probably scared any FA from playing through a sore hip unless they are really confident about it. Probably why he sat out just to make sure nothing worrisome.

 

Me too. Bo Jackson had a sore hip.

 

yeah, i'm getting off topic, but not enough has been said about the boston/IT situation, imo. they buried that pretty well. though, to our benefit, AD's dad (and certainly AD) didn't forget.

 

Just weird that he didn't have any injury issues until we got him. I have a bit of concern with him developing a little chemistry with Lebron, but it is what it is. He can score and Lebron prefers his PG to be able to knock down jumpers. D'Angelo has that ability.

 

Lebron has never played with a great traditional PG: Kyrie is a shooting guard in a PG's body. DLo will be his best traditional PG ever likely by his career ends.
It will be good to see if he can unlock some aspects of Lebron's game that teams don't end up using because he's been uber elite playmaker with the ball in his hands (i.e. Lebron as the corner 3 outlet or in the dunker spot )

 

D'Angelo is actually a lot similar to Kyrie IMO. He's a scorer that can facilitate, also like Dame. Their career assists numbers are similar. He's not as explosive of a pure scorer as those two though.
I don't think it will be an issue, he just has to find his comfort zone playing off of Lebron. Lebron isn't giving up the control of the offense to anyone IMO, he's going to Lebron as always. That doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing.

 

Lakers run their program like p******. Scared f***ing puntangs. That's why.