Rui Hachimura Discussion: Huge Buckets

He used to cuss out Rob, and now he doesn't?

Spoiler

He just does it in Japanese.

 

i wonder if this is some coded discussion of friction bc rui's a handy protege, and handy seems to have left on bad terms?

 

It was pretty apparent that Rui was frustrated with how Ham used him in 2024. Maybe he was vocal about it and directed some of the frustration toward the front office.

 

He didn't unfortunately do well from the bench.

He averaged 8.6pts, 2.5rebs and 0.6ast on the 27 games he came off the bench playing 23 minutes.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/h/hachiru01/splits/2026

I don't think we can pay 20 million for him to have that role

 

I agree but there's also the idea of paying for someone who you can develop or can develop into a better player.

Rui is what he is at this point. I hate to say it but do you see him getting better? I don't.

You could use that roster spot to develop a younger player who hasn't reached his ceiling whether it's being a shooter, defender, rebounder, etc.,

You can pencil Rui in for 14/4 on good shooting efficiency. But can he do something else to help the team?

 

Defense defense defense better fit fit fit .... you have to put points on the board from DEEP in the modern NBA. Something the Lakers have struggled finding guys to do since forever with how many have come in and not been able to do it. So Rui .... meh.... not that important we can just develop someone else into this perfect 2-way player that he is not. And hope they can shoot in the high 30's. Man you don't know what you got till it's gone with the 43% from deep all season and then scaled up to freaking 55% or whatever in the playoffs against 2 of the top defensive teams, and proven every year in the playoffs.

 

I am convinced that there will always be a group of fans who aren’t ever satisfied with any given Lakers squad- even a Championship One.

 

Rui was better defensively last season rather than the one just finished. But I thought in the post season both years he really dialed up his defense.

I do think that he can still improve defensively with his consistency, I also think the coaching staff can get more out of him offensively off the bench. If he is a 12-15 pt scorer that can scale up when Lebron is out, that to me is valuable.

Like I said, if you resign him to 16, Kennard to 9, Hayes to 4.5, Smart to 10 (part of the MLE) and use Adou at 2.1, you’ve got your bench sorted for 40 million? That’s an effective use of resources.

 

RUI MADE over 18 mil last year so why would he take a cut but we will see he is 28 so this
could be 3 or 4 yr with minimal raises to take him towards total bechwarmer time