D'Angelo Russell Discussion: Opted In!

For what he makes, he should be counted in to be our third best player every night.
He’s proven that he can’t be and I’m sure that he will be moved if the right deal comes up.

 

he only makes 18 million. that's 5th starter/sixth man money these days. rui makes almost as much and does way less for us.

gabe and vando make ~2/3 what he does and have played like 8 games combined.

for a guy to be counted on as a third guy, he needs to make 25-30 million per.

in denver, mpj makes 33 per:



here's dlo:



i just don't see him as a big problem, particularly on offense (where most complaints originate). he's basically the pg version of mpj at almost half the cost.

our problem is that we don't defend or rebound consistently as a team. i'm really not sure i can think of the trade that solves our issues. the improvement has to be internal, imo.

 

Green did podcasting and lost his focus. He wasn’t the same player IMHO, and it irked me as a fan he wasn’t working on fixing his shot rather than working on his post playing career opportunities.

I heard DLO is podcasting now. The bright lights are too distracting for most. Maybe he’s one that just can’t do both without it affecting his day job.

 

Man hes been trash lately:

 

18m still looks like overpay

 

i mean, it's absolutely not, especially at 2 years. i wish he was better, too, but he's probably underpaid vs. his value/production right now.

had we signed him to 4/100, i'd be right here complaining with you, though.

...and he'd still be basically the same on-court value as mpj but cheaper...winning hides flaws as much as the absence of the latter produces the former.

 

I guess, only referring to overpay based on these types of games, think I heard one of those nba podcast with dlo on saying hes underpaid but he gave a good answer bout that pay....but if this continues he's gona get traded

 

Whether he’s underpaid or overpaid, he’s underperforming for what we need.
We need at least one guy other than AD and LeBron to play well every night and DLO can’t even be counted on to do this more than every fourth or fifth game.
For me, he’s been a big disappointment.

 

I feel it's a bit of a different comparison since they play different positions. Denver kind of had no choice but to extend MPJ to avoid another Carmelo situation, although I'm uncertain if any team would've spunked up how much money he got. I don't remember any big name FA that ever signed with the Nuggets (Paul Millsap? lol) and at a brief look, their fans aren't that upset about how much he gets paid since they finally won a ring and they feel he's getting better overall.

I agree that we got a fine deal on Russell, but he needs to be more consistent or else its going to be constant trade rumors for him. Could we have been in a better place with Dennis? Feels like the latter would've been a better fit, but it's more on Ham this year so far.

 

The issue is the contract should be a motivation for DLo. The Lakers gave him fair value and basically gave him the amount he was worth plus a few more million to get rid of the trade kicker.

The thing is though what is disappointing is that he is not proving the Lakers wrong. The contract is also designed since it's short term and mid tier in terms of salary to allow him to get a much bigger deal if he proves his value. He should have every motivation to go out there to prove the doubters wrong and he's doing the opposite

 

#focus

 

But if you start with the premise that all professional athletes are overpaid compared to their contributions to society, it’s all good.

but when you look at revenue, it becomes relative

 

Anthony Irwin said people close to the Lakers told him the locker room has been fed up with DAR's attitude ..

It's worth what it's worth

 

and we couldn't afford to let dlo walk in free agency for a bunch of reasons, including that we need his skill set pretty badly, as is obvious when he's not available.

we went to the conference finals after being one of the worst teams in the league for 18 months.

again i feel like we don't have the full dennis story. but say we use our mle there and let dlo walk. then schroder's our only pg. toronto is 11-15. for all the schroder pining, this is what he did for us last year and is doing this year:



people would be very upset right now if instead of gabe and dlo we had just schroder.

i think he's being exactly who he's been. he's not disappointing me because i had realistic expectations that he would be...the same guy. he's been the same guy.

well, yes. but this is largely our fault for talking about this on a message board.

you can tell lebron hates him, so i'm guessing he'll be out of here at some point. but no, trading him for mike conley or zach lavine won't have the impact people are suggesting (i think it may go the opposite way).

 

It will be interesting to see how D'Angelo performs, in these 2 games with Minnesota coming up. I thought their GM took a pretty good shot at him, when he said that, one of the main reasons that they traded for Conley, was because they need more maturity in the locker room. It was a bad look, to be going after a guy, that your FO just gave up 80 picks for though.

 

Did he happen to, and if so, could you …. elaborate on what kind of attitude he’s talking about?
Everything since he got here for his second run “seems” to have been positive from reports. Supportive, cheer leading, mentoring, etc.

 

I mentioned it on the previous page but this was the extent of it...

I think it's strictly on the court stuff and his prep for each game that's not sitting well. The supporting, cheering, mentoring is sideline/ off the court stuff which I don't think anyone has an issue with.

 

Got it thanks …. missed that. And I agree completely with sirron in that case, and Pioneer who laid out the obvious fact THIS really IS a “show me” year for him if he expects to get back into the mid 20M range in his career ….. that WTF is he now doing devoting what has to be considerable time to a podcast?? Has to be if it’s to be any good.

 

he's made like, 150+ million in his career so far, so i'm not sure there's a "gotta play to eat" mentality here. i don't think he really aspires to greatness, tbh. and i think that's lebron's (and lots of people's) problem with him. i just don't see obvious upgrades, and some of what he brings is hard to replace at his salary level.

i also don't see a lot of options out there to trade and get back the shot creation/shot making he brings along with being able to handle the pg duties.