His defense on switches has been a pleasure to watch ... Should have been on Green side ( not BI) when Curry missed his FT , not sure what happened here communication wise
Struck me too. It was a bad match-up for Ingram on the block. Small detail that one of the kids or coaches should have caught.
My favorite sequence from any player of the entire game was Julius iso'd on the perimeter against a dancing steph, completely locking him up and forcing him into a tough miss with a hand in his grill.
This was indeed a great moment. He's always shown impressive man-to-man defense on switches and it's come out more than once this season. He did it to Wall too. I'm impressed by his ability to block shots around the rim in man-to-man post possessions too. He's gotten so much better at that. The only thing somewhat holding him back is a second and third effort on defense in those situations, but the progress he's shown is still remarkable.
He did it to Lou Williams too. Which is why taking him out and not putting him back at the end of the game really cost us down the stretch vs. the Clippers. I put that blame on Luke. But if you notice, Luke kept him in down the stretch and we got it to overtime against the champs.
True realdeal. And what I like is Durant sought BI out and gave him a heartfelt embrace and "great game" talk right when the game finished. You could tell he was so impressed with the kid. And then for Draymond to come out and say such great things about Randle - that's just awesome. Like you I also thought Clarkson did extremely well out there, too. And Lonzo got out of his shooting slump for a while as well, plus had a ton of assists as usual. The future does look bright, just need a go to guy here to take it to the next level.
This was one of the points I saw too. Durant was genuinely concerned about what Ingram was doing to him and after the game was sure to encourage Ingram to keep that up. That was huge. Hopefully this is a big coming out party for Brandon.
There are just too many benefits in monitoring his minutes. So I'm not understanding why folks want him to play more minutes. If he averages around 25 mins per game, I think it really works out in our favor. On the business end, if he decides to stay in LA, you don't have to give him the max because he's a super-sub. You also drive his trade value way up because he's ridiculously efficient in limited minutes (ie last night at one point in the game, he had 18 points in 17 minutes of action.) Other teams trading for him would think of the possibilities he could bring to their team as a starter. On the court, he loves playing up tempo and aggressively (on both sides of the court). In limiting his minutes, you save him from himself cause he can use up most of his fouls without fouling out. Also in limiting his minutes, he doesn't have to really rest on either end of the court and just go full throttle. Coming in off the bench, you can also see that talent favors our bench and Jules can eat and be the center of our emphasis on both sides of the ball. Folks don't like Nance starting (2nd on the team behind JC in PER for our team) but since he doesn't have to be the focus in that starting lineup, it allows guys like BLo (dude needs to wake the f*** up) and BI to focus on eating. Again it doesn't matter who starts on this young team, but rather who finishes. Randle has been the guy finishing these games when they're competitive, so getting a starting gig should mean little to him right now. If he embraces this role, we should give him an extension, cause his cap hold of 12M will allow us to maneuver in bringing in 2 stars (who hopefully are willing to sacrifice a little K in year 1 of their contracts) and Jules would come in off the bench to provide instant offense/energy, also prolonging any aging star we do end up bringing in (ie Brony). Its a win-win and I hope Jules accepts that type of role. If he doesn't, his trade value is still at an all time high right now, so I hope we don't lose him for nothing if it comes to that.
That switch onto Step that led to an air ball was great. That D on Durant for one of his missed shots down the stretch was good too.
