D'Angelo Russell Discussion: Adopting A Professional Attitude

Dude had a good playoffs until this series, holy hell was he bad.

Idk what to do with him. Yeah he’ll probably get $20m per and I like him for the regular season but we can’t have this sort of disappearance in the playoffs.

Can’t just let him walk and not a whole lot of trade options out there. Trading with Chicago would be nice tbh.

 

Lavine? Ahemm

 

If Dlo scores his season average, the Lakers win this series. Only 10 more points a game. He needs to change his mindset this summer to resurrect his career.

 

The question is at how much? Seeing how he didn't recognized that he sucked out there and didn't wanted to be bench. Kind of remind me of Russ. He might be delusional in his worth...

 

Yes he had a disaster series but you do NOT let him walk for nothing and make the same mistake that we did with Julius Randle years back when we let him go for nothing.

That's horrible asset management and we gave up a protected 1st round pick to get him, so you cannot let him go for that reason alone.

Good news is - I think the Lakers can make DLO sweat a bit because the teams that have cap space...I don't see a single team giving DLO $30M, nor do any of those teams NEED a point guard or a guard!

DLO could actually get squeezed out of the market completely similar to Schroder 2 years ago. He has to be careful to not expect $30M. He should be looking at a 1 or 2-year "prove it" deal with the Lakers instead. Get your value back up because right now...you're not gonna get what you want and you'll get squeezed out completely. Plus, he needs to see that the expectations will change A LOT for him if he's at $15-20M versus $25-30M.

For us, DLO still has value around the league in a trade..so we have to make sure we re-sign him to a REASONABLE amount that doesn't turn teams off but it's a good enough amount that he's still happy and wanting to contribute.

We can't forget what he did against the Grizz and Warriors. He was key in both of those series. Unfortunately, Denver exposed him. I hope he can bounce back from this...he's still young and can still improve and get better. This was the furthest he got in the playoffs - so I hope he learns from this and is better from this.

Rob Pelinka better make sure he doesn't let him go for nothing though...

 

theres no improving his speed/athleticism, I'd hope he would improve and be more consistent shooting the 3ball tho, thats going to be his value to this team 39% is good but he could be better with this team....def is all effort even with being slow just need to be better position, he cant do anything against shifty players 1on1

 

I think he can work on his defense. He is not a Steph or Murray where they need to rest on defense. He is not slower than AR lol. He just need to put in the effort. If he can play defense and score in the high teens, he is a keeper.

 

in the regular season, he's jamal murray. in the post season, he shrinks and murray steps up. he's as fast and athletic as murray.

dlo's problems have always been about his mentality/approach. it's improved, but not fast enough for us in either stint, weirdly enough.

very curious to see how rob and company approach this summer with him.

 

cant say I agree on the same as murry part, murry can get into the paint with relative ease as oppose to Dlo

 

I wonder if being exposed and targeted as a defensive liability by the Nuggets made him self conscious. Once you get picked on, it's either fight or flight. He chose flights.

 

I think this kind of thinking is misplaced. Every basketball player is going to have irrational confidence that’s what lets them succeed to such a high level and make the nba. DLo is going to back himself and think he is an all star with usage, how could he not? When you view it from that point of reference, you understand why Westbrook had irrational confidence in himself as well, he was a multiple time all star that was a MVP and felt he could still put numbers up.

Unfortunately basketball players are usually the last to know they’ve lost it, and as they say pride always comes before the fall.

 

His decision just seems off when he gets sped up. I think going thru film and running thru the actions after would help him the most.

Completely seemed to lose the ability to try to find the open player when the defense cut him off, took 3s when he should have drove, and didn't get into any heaters where just seemed he couldn't miss.

I mean the other team ms were at least conscious of him and I thought he learned some things in the GS series particularly posting up, cutting off ball, but Denver just totally took him out

 

This is why I don’t think he’s interested in taking a pay cut, and will probably ask for a slight raise.

 

That's what separate the winners and the losers, players like Kobe, he was benched in his first year or two and he worked hard and met the challenges and exceeded, the Russ of the NBA just think that he's great and never worked on his game.

 

Is he going to get a heart transplant?

 

I completely disagree. Austin is sneaky quick with his feet. This is how he’s able to juke players out of position. Did you already forget what he did to Giannis? He’s twice as fast as the shoes in cement DLo.

 

regular season this year:

20/6/4 on 45/40/83 shooting, 31% of FGAs came inside of 10ft
18/6/3 on 47/40/83 shooting, 31% of FGAs came inside of 10ft

which is which? does it matter?

this is my fear. feels like another schroder situation, potentially, in that our valuation (and the league's) is different than his and his agent's. nobody is going to throw big money at dlo this summer, i'm almost certain of it. the question is whether he's going to end up taking the mle somewhere because we moved on from him after difficult opening discussions.

for example, we could probably find a pg somewhere for beasley/bamba/#17 and just re-up walker at a slight raise. and this would please jeanie greatly.

i don't want that, though. i want dlo back at 4/100 or less. get him a sports psychologist for the playoffs, but rack up the wins in the regular season because he's a near perfect fit with the rest of our prinicipal guys (particularly lebron, AD, and reaves).

 

I can't imagine there is much of a market for DLO after that performance but I suppose stranger things have happened.

Definitely can't see anyone being willing to hard cap themselves for a sign and trade.

While he may still think highly of himself, I also have to think his reps are having some tough conversations with him about his value right now. He lost money in that series. No way around it.

I'd prefer to resign him to an agreeable deal and then see what happens as the season goes along.