D'Angelo Russell Discussion: Adopting A Professional Attitude

If I had a deal on Westbrook...absolutely. You would be insane not to.

But if not,...I mean I like Boogie.

But I say this...the next 4-5 years...GS has it locked man. I dunno if I would desperately want to win now because chances are I won't be able to. So while I do want this team to get much better and become a desirable place for FAs, I also know that trading the future for a present that is doomed by GS makes little sense to me.

The Lakers better position themselves to strike without sacrificing the future. I feel no pressure right now to "win now". If I had Russell and Cousins...I wouldn't want to see them age in front of my eyes losing year in and out.

 

Ireland is notorious for wanting to "win now" and not having patience for rookies. I remember him saying he hoped and thought we would trade the #2 pick as well. Why would we trade Russell? Because of the Nick Young tape? That is literally the only reason I can think of. And by "reason" I mean something you could point to that wasn't a positive.

Besides, Walton really likes DAR. The front office personally texted DAR to tell him NOT to listen to trade rumors. And like KB24 said, GS has this league on lockdown for the next 4 years. Us and Minny are in a prime spot to hit our stride just as GS starts to slow down. The amount of moves we'd have to make to compete with GS is insane. Think about it. We'd need to trade Ingram, Randle and Russell and get back Cousins and at least one other bona fide star to superstar. Then we'd need to sign Westbrook on top of that. We'd probably need to keep Clarkson as he's the most ready to contribute now (based on last season anyway, but Russell looks better this summer league than Clarkson did last summer league). Is Boogie's value low enough that we could give up JUST Randle for him? Cause we'd need Russell and Ingram to get the conversation started on a player like Paul George. Westbrook/Clarkson/George/Nance/Cousins...with Deng, Lou and Zubac off the bench? I mean it's a really good team, but I'm not even sure that team (which has us getting EVERYTHING we want and ripping people off in the process) can beat the Warriors.

 

I see no reason to believe we're trading Russell and I didn't hear him say he was guaranteeing we are going to trade Russell.

I've heard him say we'd explore it and we'd see what's out there and I think that's probably the truth. Mitch is a diligent trader, he's probably doing his homework and finding out if there's value somewhere.

 

The other thing to keep in mind with ESPN TV is they now use Byron as a regular on that one show (forget what it's called right now). Byron needs to be propped up. Since many people have pointed to his handling of the kids, especially Russell, as a reason for his firing, they need to denigrate Russell to make their hire look better. Byron needs to seem credible, and by shifting the blame to Russell in the scenario in which he was fired, Byron looks better. He even looks...sympathetic. ESPN knows they can control the narrative on most things. Heck, Russell could ball out this season and average 18/7/5 and ESPN could still control the narrative that he's doing it at "the expense of the team" and most of the nation who is asleep by the time Laker games actually start, would just lap it up.

 

It's funny I know he was on Sports Nation because Kellerman did an absolute 180 on him. He s*** on Byron for two years calling him incompetent and unfit for his job, then he goes on the show and Kellerman decides it wasn't his fault and Byron was a good coach in a bad spot. Something that bothered me about the Wilbon video @Weezy posted is that Wilbon said that no matter what happens, Byron needs to be credited with Russell's growth this year. I mean it's just an ignorant and idiotic thing to say.

Byron was in a tough spot having to deal with young kids and Kobe's farewell tour and all that FO turmoil, but to pretend like he was competent at the things he COULD control is simply wrong. It wasn't just a bad situation, he was an awful coach.

 

But that's today's media...not just in sports, but everywhere. Take stances and then do battle. One takes black, the other takes white. One says he's incompetent, the other says it's a bad situation. it seems like it can never be both anymore. "Trump is racist because of how he talks about immigration." Well, he may very well be racist, but we still have a major problem with immigration that has nothing to do with whether or not Trump is a racist.

 

Oh the media has been that way for well over a decade now. It's just easier to see when you can get information from so many fronts just how biased certain outlets are.

For politics I like to read the account myself, then listen to both FOX and MSNBC on occasion just to hear both sides talk it out.