Mitch Expects More From Byron And Himself

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Mitch sounds pretty pissed off with the way things are going and his quotes do NOT match what Byron just did by sitting the young players...

Interesting.

 

I think you're reading too far into the Randle one. He was very complimentary. I think you're right that he wants to test their trade value, but he needs to see both of theirs at this point.

Randle or Russell + the #3 pick could net a really good player for what it's worth.

 

I don't think the arms matter. He's a double double in the league at 21. I've posted stats like this previously. There are only 30 players in the NBA averaging 10/8. Only four of them are under 22. Of those, only three are averaging 11/8.5:

KAT 14.8/9.1
Porzingis 14.6/8.9
Randle 11.8/9.3

We have one of the best young big men in the NBA, but it's for some reason not good enough for people to understand. There are not many players like this - two or three in a draft - and we have one. You build around him.

 

Would you say the same about...

Jahlil Okafor 17-8-1 on a 1-win team?

Wiggins 17-5-2 on a 16-win team?

Oladipo 14-4-2 on a 23-win team?

Anthony Davis 13.5-8-1 on a 27-win team?

Lillard 19-6.5-3 on a 33-win team?

Kyrie 18.5-5-4 on a 21-win team?

John Wall 16-8-5 on a 23-win team?

The fact is that if you look at ROOKIES posting big numbers on bad teams, you get a much weaker argument of the form: Player X puts up big numbers on bad team Y, so Player X is not a good player (than if you do it with vets).

 

I looked at the draft, stopped at the first player who put up big numbers as a rookie, and checked how bad their teams were. In almost all cases, the teams were terrible, but the players weren't. I think you need an argument, honestly. I don't see it.

 

Interesting stuff. I do give the FO their shame of blame in this puzzle but it has nothing to do with what Mitch is talking about. He and the FO have drafted well and did in fact, bring in a good mix of vets to go with our young guys. But the FO's choices in the last three coaches have been abysmal.

The elephant in the room in both this article and on the court is of course Kobe. It's mentioned here but it just says it's a question - and there are no answers given from Mitch or the writer. When Kobe is firing with abandon, taking 20 shots a game at a 30% clip, he's freaking horrible. And his D is bad as well. And the coach is inexplicably letting him play 35 minutes a game.

See, last night with the new lineup, for whatever reason, Kobe shot much less, played smarter (more facilitation, less chucking, more mid-range) . . . in other words he played more like we've been begging to see him do. Why doesn't he play like that with the rookies? Is that really the rookies' fault? He should have been playing like this from day one of the season.

As a result, last night we were a lot closer through three and a half quarters than we've been all year against good teams. To me that had more to do with the competitive score than benching Randle and Russell.

 

For my money Randle's "uniqueness" is the entire reason I'm comfortable building around him at all. I love that he brings something different that very few other teams can defend against. He's got that Kobe/dog in him that I absolutely love and he's growing in leaps and bounds.

He's now got a go-to move that helps with lengthy defenders (the hop step in the lane to the fade-away jumper)
He's shown he can rebound in traffic among great NBA players despite his apparent height and arm-length issues.
He's shown flashes of good passing ability although we've seen less of it since the season started (scheming is a huge issue there)
He's shown pretty fantastic dexterity in man-to-man defense even against smaller/faster players.

I mean he's got a lot of issues too (setting screens, moving the ball, rotating defensively, etc) but for my money this kid is something absolutely special. If I'm not getting back a Top 3 player in the league, I'm not making that move.

 

But see I think the elephant in the room is Byron.

If Byron were a stronger coach, he could rein in Kobe and that would solve the problem. A good coach (not even great) tells his players what the deal is and what will happen. Byron doesn't have the strength to give Kobe limitations so Kobe will take everything he can. Kobe has always been that way.

 

Oh for sure Byron is the main problem. He's just not the elephant in the room. Mitch is doing this interview with the expressed intent to deflect the blame from him. Byron sucks and he's trying to cover for him.

The thing is the article brings up Kobe's chucking as a question but gives no answer. We saw the answer last night: the answer is if we want to be closer in these games the biggest factor is not the lineups, but Kobe playing smart.

Now we still can't win the game relying on Kobe at the end of the game, of course. It's stupid of Byron to think that we can seeing that Kobe comes up short every time this year. That's where benching the kids really hurts. They are still fresh and they are actually our best chance to close games, even with their inexperience. Lou and Kobe have sucked down the stretch.

All of this is pretty damned obvious to us so of course it's frustrating to watch Byron screw this all up so royally.