D'Angelo Russell Discussion: Adopting A Professional Attitude

Beasley hit

Sitting out games in the regular season, promoting his drinks at a post presser, not a good look, all about the business side

 

He seems to be slowly figuring out how to deal with the much more intense defense that has time to gameplan. he's frustrating as he has the tool to beat these defenses, he's just to be smart enough to use them

 

He wasn't terrible last night, but that effort isn't enough either. I am estatic that Austin and Rui have both stepped up, but we should expect more from D'Angelo, the kid is making 31 million dollars.

 

Well this aged like milk . . .

 

hey, he's been better here than what i've seen from him before in the playoffs. but no, not great.

 

True. But playing like this, i would have a hard time paying him more than 15mil a year. I would rather focus on keeping Austin and Rui.

 

If we don't sign him, we will just lose cap space. We have to sign him

 

he's still worth more than 15, even playing like this. tyus jones (who's good and may still bury us) makes that as a backup. russell's a legit starter who can give you 30+ quality minutes a night and win you some games with his scoring and playmaking. he's worth 20, even if he's going to be inconsistent in the playoffs. and we can afford that, no problem, while retaining reaves and rui.

the real issue is what if his agent wants max? i don't think he'll get it anywhere, but i'm sure that's where he'd like to start negotiations. i'm hoping we can get him for 4/100 or less. that would allow us to fill out the rest of the roster and not have to cut corners in any serious way, imo.

 

Of course, completely agree. But there's very few teams with cap space, I really don't see what team will throw that money to him that has it. It's a guards league, maybe the Spurs could do it, I'm not seeing other team throwing that cap space money to him. If such team don't have it, we have a s&t so we are good

 

i think any circumstance in which he walks for nothing is basically doom, and i'm not exaggerating. we've got maybe one last year of lebron after this, we can't be using the mle to cover starting spots anymore.

we can s&t him if we can't come to terms. and if his agent wants 30 million, we can offer that for three years with a team option on the 3rd or something.

anyway, i'm not super concerned about this one. the more things play out, the more likely it is that we just let beasley walk for nothing (boo; i get it, but boo) and pay what it takes to keep reaves, rui, and russell. hopefully we just keep bamba, too.

 

He better play really well at least every other game here on out if he wants that $25 mill per. At this point, I just don’t see it. I completely understand having to sign him because of our cap situation, but I don’t want regular season only players on my team.

 

i mean, he did sort of win us game 4. we were dead in the water before he hit those shots.

 

Yes he did. One great game so far.

 

he was pretty good in game 1, too. his only true stinker was game 2.

i'm not arguing he's a great playoff performer this year, but a) he's been better than the last time i saw him in the playoffs (and the play in game), and b) lots of guys' performance dips in the postseason. the opposite is actually pretty rare, even among stars.

 

he hasn’t been good enough for a guy making $30 million. He still isn’t close to being good enough to get a new deal at $25 million per.

 

I love it when a player can shut me up!
Great game DLo!!!