Russell Westbrick Discussion: Clipper Gonna Clip

Do it Darvin! First s*** you get from him that’s hurting the starting five. Should take no more than the pre-season for that to become obvious. Take him behind closed doors and explain this is how it’s going to be, your way…. or off the bench …. or go the hell home and everyone in LA is going to know the reason is YOUR unwillingness to be about the team. Not Vogel last year and not Me this year.

 

… waits for the newcomers’ replies of “That’s creepy!”

EDIT … did you change it? The lips were always out of sync with the words but now even worse and they move longer and the lipstick is different?

 

no changes, just seemed like a good gif for the occasion. Seems different to me as well, but I guess that's what time does to you

 

I like the idea of converting him to a Stay at Home Father more than anything else if he can’t be dumped.

 

I keep seeing "Ham is a no-nonsense coach" sentiment... Allow me to doubt it would apply to the likes of Bron/AD. And I am skeptical about Brick...

Ham was never in charge of managing these types of egos. Giannis doesn't count AND Ham wasn't the one to manage him, as an assistant coach.

 

Yes, should be interesting this year as usual.

 

Hater

 

It's a healthy skepticism.

Nothing wrong there.

 

yeah, i think he's right that ham being new gets to set an agenda that vogel didn't get a chance to set. and his 4-year contract means russ can be benched or sent away.

 

I'm not too encouraged by Russ's future here. Ham said he wants Russ to focus on being a Pitbull defensively and being comfortable off-ball. Those are big weaknesses in his game that I doubt he can change at the tender age of 34.

 

The problem with Westbrook is not just the shooting.
He's a really bad defender, TO prone, and is difficult to coach.

Lakers aren't going anywhere but back to the lottery if he's not gone

 

You beat me to it - he's a dumb basketball player. If you ask him to be a pitbull defensively, I bet we just got more instances like the OKC game where he just leaves his man inexplicably to try to get a steal. In Russ's head that Russ going "all out"

Off the ball where the hell do you stick him in the dunker spot? He doesn't cut well or move off the ball well

 

And for that to work not only do we have to land a top 15 shooter in FA (can't), but AD has to improve last year's 3% by 2x at the very least. I'm not holding my breath on either of those.

 

AD needs to take threes in the corner, where he can hit them. i was a big vogel defender, but any offense that has AD making catches at 45s beyond the three point line is total insanity. every time i saw him catch it out there, i was like, wtf is this?

back to russ:

think of him like harden, who's a terrible defender, but actually is really good in the post on d. russ can play straight up man defense. so devise a system that has him doing as much of that as possible and requiring very little in the way of attention to off-ball action. when he's off-ball, he thinks of himself as a rover. why not make him something of an on-ball rover--he goes where the ball goes and tries to disrupt, the rest of the defense operates on that assumption. obviously, the golden states of the world kill that, but a) there's literally one of those right now and b) you're not guaranteed to face them when it matters.

what if when you're playing milwaukee, you tell russ: giannis is yours. stick to him. we'll help in the deep post and otherwise, it's your glory. might work better than having him ignore some guy you've never heard of in the corner.

 

This is how I would make Westbrook work offensively.

We want Lebron to play around 30 mins during the regular season, so that means you have Russ 18 mins on ball running the show when Lebron is on the bench. That means we have about 14-16 mins of overlap between the two. I’m suggesting we have Russ initiate 35% of those minutes or roughly 5-6 mins with Lebron on the floor to give him a breather. I think we can install this foil into our offense where every so often we just tell Russ to push it or to attack the paint for shots at the rim or kick outs or we have Russ operate in the post.

Now the harder question to me is how do we have Russ be effective off ball. Houston did it by having him cut a ton and be a secondary driver when the defence over helped on Harden. I think this is what we need to install. Another point I would like to make is Russ shot 45% from the corners last season and 40% the year before (granted I think this was only a bit above 100 attempts in total over two years but regardless he isn’t half bad from the corner).

None of the above mentions any plays we design to get more out of Lebron and Westbrook when they’re on the floor together. It also doesn’t take into consideration them playing together more during the playoffs - but that’s what the regular season is for, to build something that works.

I think to make this work we either need a 3&D Center or we need two 3&D wings. There are options out there TJ Warren, Batum, Ingles, Otto Porter, Wood etc. It’ll come down to the team they can put together for Ham.

Defensively I’m in full agreement with abeer, stick him on ball and rave about how it’s the difference for our team and manipulate him and the media into thinking this is some golden ticket to our defence. Get him to buy in on aggressive D like Kobe did at the Olympics.

 

Can we get Screaming A a job in NYK's front office?