Rui Hachimura Discussion: Huge Buckets

Rui is looking like the odd man out. I still think he would be good off the bench and he's done nothing wrong per se but the fit doesn't look great right now.

His jumper is nice and it's a plus having a big dude at 3 with gravity at it's harder to close out on a guy with size but his defense is bad and he has a lot of brain farts. Unlike a guy like Smart it isn't matched or exceed by a bunch of wow what effort and where did you pull that defensive play out of your a** moves to make up for it.

Basically Rui needs to be surrounded by high IQ, good defenders, with good motors but the Lakers have 3 stars who need that as well.
You can already see what's happening the second half of games - Laravia, Smart, Gabe, and Hayes are taking all the critical second-half minutes. JJ is is doing a good job with these lineups with in-game corrections but the Lakers are starting with their hands tied behind their backs, particularly on defense with Rui as a starter right now

 

yeah, the case is pretty close to closed on this particular issue, right? most of us foresaw this in the summer, so it's a bit strange that we're still playing around with it at this point.

i feel like rui will understand if he moves to the bench and still plays about the same number of minutes, right?

it's got to be an interpersonal thing--lots of talk about how rui just does what we ask all the time, seems like a genuinely good guy, etc.

i just wonder if it's even worse if we wait until we start actually losing games to make the shift--then it looks like we're blaming rui for the losses.