That statement makes no sense. Randle is playing his proper position, Nance is not. I’m not happy with Nance’s play at all, he’s been awful, I’m not sure he’s even made a basket yet. If he were playing PF next to Lopez or Bogut though, I assume he’d be much more free to go grab boards and play solid defense instead of struggling so hard against guys taller and bigger than him like Plumlee. It’s not fair to put him in that position and ask him to be what he’s not and then say he should be just as productive regardless.
Khmrp: One is playing as a starter and within a year will jump into the $15M per capusphere, while the other is a bench player and will be paid $1-3M for the next 3 years. Its night and day really. A more comparable scenario is TB/Zu vs LNJ. If Mr. Bryant or his son outshines Mr. Nance, then the criticism is valid IMHO. Everybody is open for critique, but it should be done with tempered expectations. Deng gets paid a ridiculous amount and he's a vet so there aren't any excuses for the guy. KCP gets a ridiculous amount so his D should be non-stop this year. Randle is heading into a massive contract, so he needs to step it up. Clarkson is getting paid handsomely so production is expected. Meanwhile Zo, Kuz, TB and Hart are rookies so a longer leash is necessary. BI and Zu are 2nd year guys so a longer leash is expected of them. I get that Nance deserves criticism, but comparing him (a 3rd year player 27th overall) to Randle (4th year player 7th overall pick) makes absolutely no sense to me as of right now....especially since both have completely different games.
1st off till randle gets 15mill he should get judged by what he makes now and doesn't seem like mgmt. plans on bringing him back anyways and 2ndly Nance isn't a 2nd pick
^^^Yeah, I caught the error too and changed it at the last moment, but you seemed to have read it before the edit. Thx for the clarification tho. Either way, 3 picks away from being a 2nd rounder...a pseudo 2nd rounder if you will...but you get the idea. Temper expectations bro..haha. Its preseason..the Dubs lost to Denver and shot 12% from 3...SA just lost to the lowly Queens...we lost games in which arguably our best offseason aquisition and best scorer (Lopez) has yet to play. We're all sick of losing and being other teams' punching bags, but that is why we need the #2018plan to work. Developing our youth and waiting till the Dubs disband can't be the only option, so I'm happy the FO has positioned us accordingly. We got no pick this year, unless its traded for before the deadline. So we need everybody to play well in hopes of fighting for the 6-8th seed (GS, Htown, OKC, SA, Minny barring injury are a lock IMHO), destroying our pick to Boston/Philly and upping everybody's trade value, in case we get busy at the deadline (I'm kinda expecting us to). So Nance definitely needs to step it up...but seeing as he's on my non-trade list, I'm confessing to selfishly being partial on the guy. That being said, he deserves to get blasted if TB/Zu outplay him. Randle...not so much. Yeah, but getting back to Kuz. He's the feel good story of a pretty lowly start to the year so far.
Lol, we’ll see if he’s still “good” after he’s actually played against those guys. Hopefully he is since that would mean he held his own, but damn don’t get ahead of yourself kid, we all need stars on our team.
My thoughts exactly. Not to mention, two more major mouths to feed means 100% chance of less opportunities for Kuzma.
Don't care. It's the right attitude. If he doesn't think he can be his own man or win without big daddy coming to the rescue, I don't want him.
I still can not fathom how a Top 5 talent (seemingly) in this draft class fell to us at #27. It must be a combination of the following. 1. He was horribly misused in college 2. He made huge strides in a span of 4-5 months 3. He's on a hot streak Probably a bit of everything above. But his quick shooting release, great footwork, incredible motor, great positioning, feel for making the simple and right plays, and his chemistry with Lonzo are things that are impossible to ignore. Steal of the draft is an understatement at this juncture. Lonzo may have his greatest competition for ROTY on his own team.
I think #2 and the timing of it. I don't think it's a streak. His game not really exploding until 1/2 way through his junior year was a bit of excellent timing for us. If he even played like that from the beginning of that season he would have been way higher up in the draft but scouts had moved on to other prospects and they aren't likely to return to a prospect once they've scouted them that season. That saw his new game fly under everyone's radar but ours. Props to Jesse Buss and crew. Maybe they were just slow to get around to scouting him last season or some other lucky factor but that's ok. I believe in luck and I believe we had a whole lot of bad luck lifted when we cleaned house in the FO. We dumped D'Angelo w/ Mozgov and got a guy who I think will be better than DAR (as a player alone, forget about chemistry) + Brook Lopez. Looking like a great deal more and more. Let's just hope his defensive game pops like his offense is at some point. Otherwise he's gonna remain a bench scorer.
His defense is already on its way to being good if he's not oversized against some particular 4 or 5. In crunch time if KCP for some reason was not available ....hell stick him at the 2 or Ingram at the 2 and him at the 3. Great feet. Great coordination and a smoothness to his moves. Love the ambidexterity already in his game.
Not to mention he played for a smaller school and so might have gone mostly unnoticed by other teams. Just a great find by our staff. A terrific find.
it's the shooting. nobody believed in it, and there was reason to doubt. he didn't shoot like this for any stretch in college. if the lakers scouts predicted that, bully for them. without that three point accuracy, he's a fringe backup (still good for a late 1st, btw). with it, he's an impact player.
In college or at least his junior year he shot 41% from NBA 3 but not many teams thought that was a sign..
