D'Angelo Russell Discussion: Opted In!

So playoff DLo is the 1st option and no longer has AD + Lebron on his team? Sorry, I just find it weird when a player balls out for a while and the "i told ya sos" come out after a bad game. I feel like we've had plenty of games recently where the deck was stacked against us, a lot of pressure, and he did hit shots.

 

Mitchell is a top 12-15 player when he's healthy.

He didn't look good the two meetings we had w/him though.

But he's a "star" and according to Pincus, we have a reasonable shot.

Put 2 and 2 together and you get...Mitchell. lol

You are the greatest LTL. Sirron is NOT!

 

No

 

Exsqeeze me? Lebron is the greatest. We are all just witnesses.

And DLO gets the benefit of the doubt until he lays an egg in an entire series.

 

Oh, I'll squeeze you.

DLO already laid an egg in an entire PO series last year against Denver. Man, if he even played average, I'm wondering if there would be all this hostility toward him. Oh, well.

 

I just mean this year. Last year Denver owned him and took him out of the series. Did he decide to grow from that, and will never let that happen again? We'll see.

We may be playing GS next in a series, and they KNOW him since he played for them. If anyone may be able to shut a player down, it could be one that knows all of his tendencies, etc.

I'm still allowing room for growth, but if he dogs it out in another series, the gifs will be merciless.

 

if dlo has another series like last year's denver series, he'll be forced to opt-in. of course, we've been so bad (not due to his play, btw) that we may not find out!

 

yes. once we went to our expected rotations/lineups, we've been basically exactly who i expected when the season started.

i meant overall, including the fully-sleepwalked first half of the season. but that part wasn't dlo's fault, imo. another thing that happened around the same time we stopped using taurean prince like he was jaylen brown was that dlo stopped caring about what ham wanted and just played.

 

3 of the 4 best records in the West since the end of January just tell me champions/veterans teams don't care too much about 55-60% of the regular season AND/OR aren't young and enduring enough to be good for 82 games.

 

i fully believe this. i just think they're sabotaging their own interests in doing so.

 

As a fan it pisses me off but I can totally understand it as a human being .. I'd have zero interest in playing most of the regular season games if I were a 10 seasons+ veteran with titles .

Plus you just can't compete every single game with younger players after a certain mileage and age , have to pick your spots .

I just wish the Lakers would have 3 less losses

 

my issue is that you could be resting/coasting if you took care of business early. all this "it's a marathon not a sprint" stuff doesn't justify losing to a half-healthy miami team at home in january or whatever. again, the clippers can afford to rest leonard right now as a precaution because they have home court in the first round basically sewn up. their top dogs will be fresh when the "real season" begins. ours will be on fumes. again.

 

100%, this is the smart version of managing the regular season. Denver did it last year and cruised the last month of the season. The Warriors racked up a crazy record to start the 2022 season and were able to rest and absorb Green's back injury. The dumb version of managing the regular season is "I don't care what seed we are, so long as we get to the playoffs healthy". Pretty much only Top 3 seeds win championships, the 94 Rockets are the only team in the last 50 years to win it from outside the Top 3.

 

... getting ready for play-in/playoffs?

 

When he's bad he can be awful
Just a terrible game tonight. Lakers making another push in the 4th and he let both CP3 and Steph open?

 

He was bad, no way around it. Lack of engagement plus lack of athleticism equals performances like tonight. GS backcourt was focused, Dlo wasn't.

 

100% - very bad game from DLO and to be honest, he's going to lose a lot of money this summer if he doesn't step up in these last 2 games and in the play-in.

Problem with DLO is not stepping up in the big moments...this was one of the first times I wanted him to get benched in the 4th. He was getting killed on the other end and he kept missing open 3's or taking stupid shots.

 

8-30 against Sota and GSW .. Positive articles aren't going to save you buddy

 

D'Angelo has had a rough couple of games. The reality is, he's really not that guy, that most folks seem determined to believe that he is. He's still a talented dude, and he has the ability to get buckets in a bunch. Is he a reliable 2nd option? No. Is he a reliable 3rd option? Sometimes..Is this going to be enough to make a run. Maybe...maybe not. It depends on the opponent.