D'Angelo Russell Discussion: Adopting A Professional Attitude

Yeah I agree. I think more and more it's clear D'Angelo needs someone to keep him straight on the court. I thought Lin would help and without that help he's been the same as he was here.

 

20/5/5 at the age of 21....can't say he is playing bad at all...these are great numbers for a 21 year old.

He might not be the most efficient guy, but there are many many players in the NBA that aren't efficient but put up big numbers.

He is not a winner IMO...thats the only knock on him. He doesn't live and die by basketball and is kind of distracted/immature.

Also, to say he was chosen with the 27th pick is pretty much a mute point. If the Lakers didn't have the Nets pick, they would have picked him with their own pick, its not like he would have been gone.

 

I don't think it's a moot point that the Lakers traded Russell for Kuzma because the Lakers chose to make that deal and Nets wanted to do it as well. So while we didn't necessarily have to make that choice, we did make that choice and both teams are sticking by it. The Nets two days ago said they don't regret making this move and "who knows who would have drafted Kyle, kudos to the Lakers for that" meaning to me that they didn't have plans to take Kuzma. Clearly they don't regret the move although they should.

In the end, the trade to me is a giant win for the Lakers and hopefully a preview of good things to come. We got an All-Star level big for Russell and a 1st round pick that our scouting department was able to turn into a winner. I love it. What a haul. Of course, it looks even better now because we were able to snag KCP on a one-year deal. Without KCP, that trade would have looked worse, but I'm hoping we'll say that again in a few months time.

 

agreed, the big thing I have noticed too and it was hard to see it as clearly now that he's on another team is defensively he just wasn't consistent at all. I've watched about 3-4 BRK games and seeing how we are playing defense this year I'm not sure if we'd be as good if Russell was still on our team. He still doesn't communicate enough on defense and the effort isn't always there.

But yes, the man can score the ball.

 

Russell probably wants to play defense but he has to focus on offense just like he did when he was with us...

 

I'd only be excited if he was doing that and we were winning. I would however spend some time defending him. Now I'm happy I don't have to.

I still think it was a good deal and looked at the greater scope of things, we came out ahead of that deal right now. If we don't land a big FA this summer, I think we still won the deal by a decent margin, but not as great as it could have been (because Lopez will almost certainly be retained if we don't get the bigger fish). Trading Russell/Mozgov for Kuzma/Lopez long-term sounds like a good deal to me.

 

Those numbers for a 2nd year player are amazing. From a pure basketball perspective I still would want him on the team going forward. But, given all the stuff about his attitude and relationships with the team, it was the right call to move him. It was addition by subtraction. The Moz contract, Lopez and the 27th pick were all icing making it all easier to swallow.

 

I already disproved that the FO claimed this was just a salary dump. I showed you the exact quote where we mentioned Lopez and how good of a player he is before anything to do with salaries. I did that a week or two ago.

There's absolutely nothing disingenuous about what I said. The trade literally was Lopez/#27 (Kuzma) for Russell/Mozgov. What is disingenuous about the exact outcome of the trade?

And Lopez is a better player than Russell. I have no problem saying that. He's a better player, better fit for us, and he provides about as perfect a fit for this system as we could ask for. I've been saying that and I will continue to say it. I stand by it.