Austin Reaves Discussion: Foundation Piece Or Trade Piece?

i know he's said lots of good stuff about russ, but that opener was damning (not on purpose). he goes on to praise him effusively later on, though.

sounds like houston and SA poked around but didn't actually make offers. guessing both reaves and the lakers scared SA off a bit. i still thought SA might test us, tbh. i actually agree with houston's strategy given their pick situation.

interesting on denver: essentially "we executed our gameplan almost as we could have...nothing could be done"

 

I’m reading between the lines but clearly there was some kind of fracturing between Lebron and Russ where the locker room couldn’t mesh because of the elephant in the room. And I believe that has to do with Lebron trying to trade him in the first season at the trade deadline.

When you think about it, every player bar Lebron has said Westbrook was either the best teammate they’ve ever had or one of the best. And then every team mate said they enjoy playing with Lebron. So it stands to reason that Lebron just knew he couldn’t win with Russ and wanted him gone. The locker room can’t come together with that kind of underlying current. Most of it has to do with Russ salary and the lack of additional pieces it created. I’m glad he was traded and we got some depth.

Wish Russ a lot of good health moving forward, I don’t get the bad rep he gets as by all accounts he is a wonderful human being. Hope he balls out in Clipper land and they don’t make the playoffs.

 

Awww…Kobe’s nephew idolizing HBK

 

i agree about 90%. i still have a bitter taste in my mouth regarding russ's inflexibility here. he said all the right things (when he had a chance to prepare the statement), but i saw the games. and i saw the press conferences, off the cuff. he wasn't willing to do what needed to be done to win, period. i'm guessing he's plenty humbled now and will fall in line more with the clippers, but it needed to happen here if he was going to stay and salvage his rep.

 

It's funny how they just tip toed around why Russ may have a bad rap. I do respect that as a person Russ is a good teammate who has no off court issues but come on when you have rookies calling him Brick it's not like these guys don't know what's up.

Austin should be PC as he's still playing but I didn't like Barnes and SJax acting all tough about their opinions not being PC and they're acting all surprised

 

I find it weird that there isn’t a single contemporary of Russ that has anything bad to say about him but the media and fans still push the narrative. It is what it is.

 

What I saw was the sucking so much in the basketball court it was unwatchable, what do you see?

 

Yeah what @KareemtheGreat33 said above. What narrative are we pushing? We’re talking about who he was as a player doing more harm than good on the Lakers …. aside and separate from whether Russ is a good guy or not.

 

Yeah I shared my theory here a while ago and stand by it.

Players see Westbrook as the person because they have contact with it on a daily basis. and Russ seems to be a great teammate, always available and smiling, a real one, always working out in the gym, a "dumb cool" kind of guy and in such a competitive environment should be nice to have these guys.
On the other hand, media and fans only see the player and a few clips. They are more interested in results and how the player performs, stats, advanced stats, etc. And Russ has many examples where his actions resulted in losses, due to TOs, bad shots, etc.
Also, players usually got each other's back unless you're an a****** so it's hard to have any come public and dissing on a guy who on a daily basis is a great dude that never did anything to harm you.

Problem with Russ is that he's not very smart nor has good emotional intelligence. So he's kinda unware of reality and was never able to understand where his game fails. In his mind, he's dominant and that's not true now. He works hard but due to lack of awareness and technique, doesn't work on his flaws nor understands the role he needs to play to be successful. He gives his best, but his best is not enough to win the NBA.

 

I saw a team that improved once he was gone

I have spoken

 

Shaggy needs a haircut...
As for the podcast, it used to be my fave one (all the smoke) but now... i like Paulina's better. Makes me even like the guy, he sounds smart, chill and down to earth. Who knew...

 

I saw a team improve when AD and Lebron got healthy for the first time since the bubble.

Our mid season acquisitions are talked up but; Bamba didn’t play, Beasley couldn’t shoot and didn’t play, DLO was injured in the regular season and wasn’t good in the playoffs and while Vando was quite good in the regular season he wasn’t a huge factor in the playoffs.

But when Reaves, Lebron and AD all got healthy and played together, low and behold, we went on a run.

 

Yeah because Russ wasn’t there to brick or throw the ball away in the most inopportune time.

 

so many supportable arguments

 

Lebron missed time during the run; you just made a good case for how bad Russ was, tbh.

 

Even this forum tiptoes around the fact that by letting Russ go, it led to Reaves getting a lot more touches. Russ had his issues and I hated him but he has talent but this was Ewing theory case more then anything else

There is only one ball and your team already has freaking Lebron and AD on it. Just no way Reaves become the de facto 3rd guy if Brick was still around. In essence you flipped an inefficient high usage player to one of the most efficient players in the league

 

For real, I have no idea how anyone can defend Russ's play here. It's like trying to tell us that what we saw wasn't what we saw. We saw the games.

 

Without getting too caught up on social commentary, I do not like Barnes, SJax or their little show AT ALL.

 

harden and roy...he was digging. i don't even like wade that high. i actually think ray allen was better than all three of those guys, tbh, as was reggie miller. there's also the logo if we want to admit basketball was played prior to 1990.