Russell Westbrick Discussion: Clipper Gonna Clip

Which you’d think would eat Vogel up being defense is his “thing” that he hangs his hat on.

 

You can’t really look at it as 4 on 5.

You gotta look at it as the weakest offensive guard/wing probably won’t be used as a weapon every time down the floor, so we can allow Westbrook to take a few extra yards of space to be in a better position to secure a rebound.

It wouldn’t shock me if the coaching staff looked at Russ securing the rebound as more important to defence than him sticking to someone like glue. Offensive rebounds and second chance opportunities for the other team are massive momentum killers.

Russ securing the rebound also improves our offence because we get out into transition quicker for easier shots. You can see that effect because we’re #1 in pace. Russ tempo and motor along with Lebron at C seems to be doing things for Lebron, Melo and Monk and our offence has surged.

 

Hard to argue with results. I’d like to see Dwight get some run at C, and to integrate a healthy AD back ASAP

 

In before “heathy AD” cracked on as being an oxymoron …….

 

Well, we often give up tons of offensive rebounds to the other teams and wide open threes because of this setup. I guess we will have to see what our defensive rating looks like in a month now that we have some key players who contribute on that end back in.
Only the Flippers give up more offensive boards than us at 11.9. We give up 11.5 per game. That allows teams to easily erase any leads we may build.

 

right, and we've been bad in that area, as fj indicated. if we're letting russ roam to help on the defensive boards, that strategy can't be viewed as a success right now.

but the film shows russ just sort of not paying attention off ball, so i think it's generous to say he's saving himself for the d-boards. maybe we are. but he's just...not playing defense unless there's a steal to be had.

 

We've been terrible in that area due to a combination of not boxing out and poor effort. But if we're terrible in that area, doesn't it make more sense to ask Westbrook to focus on defensive rebounding? Westbrook is the best defensive rebounder on our team now that AD is inured (they're both around 7 DRB a game). I mean who else are we going to get to rebound?

The second point I want to make, Russell has clearly cut down on his 3PT attempts. You have to assume he is following direction from the coaching staff in them asking him to attack the rim more and hoist less 3pt'ers. Similar to what Houston asked from him.

So, do we then just assume he isn't following instructions on his defensive requirements? Or do we assume our coaching staff is clueless and haven't realised that Westbrook fades on off ball defence? I can't make these assumptions on either since there is proof to the opposite for both; that Westbrook is coachable and that our coaching staff communicates extremely well on people's roles.

So by eliminating those, my only conclusion is, our coaching staff want Russell to rebound hard and push the ball. And as a result we're hiding him off ball and conserving his energy on D. It makes sense since Russ is more valuable as a transition threat than as a defensive stopper - especially with players like AB, Reaves, Ariza and SJ who can defend on our team. But no one can consistently lead transition like Russ on our team.

 

Yeah, I think it’s a shame we have to plan for his defensive inattention though.

 

That was not pretty. Nothing from deep (0-5) and a lot of TOs (9).

The positive: couple big shots in the 4th, shot really well at the FT line, and really cut down the TOs in the second half (only 2, I believe)

 

A bad first half by Russ. 0-3 from three and 7 turnovers with just bad play. Looked totally off this game and rightfully walked off to the locker room before the end of the half.

Second half he was average, 0-2 from three with 2 TOs. But he didn’t attack the basket much at all.

Only positives, he boxed out once, was ok in the 4th, 5/8 when attacking at the basket.

 

With AD out Russ is our weak link.

 

League average starting PG.

One that to get him to be league average you have to muck around with your entire offensive and defensive systems to make it work and you're paying 44 million for and would cause a commotion if he was benched for bad play in the 4th quarter. yikes

 

I had to turn this one off at half. The unforced turnovers make watching him play unfun(yeah, it’s a made up word, but I like it!)

 

I agree, but do you honestly believe Vogel has the balls to?

 

I just saw a 37 year old LeBron give more effort on two consecutive plays, to prevent a layup and create a steal, than Russ did all night. There are no words that can justify this inequality.

 

There’s the god awful too many turnovers too often. But even worse then those and many of those were caused by this ….. I counted 10-11 brain farts. I’m not kidding . He had 5 or 6 in the first 5 minutes or less in the game. SOB needs a blanket party to wake him the **** up and get his head out of his ***. Am looking at you LeBron and Vogel to get through to this clown. We barely won tonight in spite of all of his brain farts. LeBron has a lot of TOs too often but he’s attempting high quality on the edge passes and moves. So many of Russ’s TOs in contrast are from laziness (a category unto itself of brain farts) (such as with passes and jumping to do them too often) …. alongside the rest of his repertoire of recurring types of brain farts. The guy needs someone to shake him and get in his face about it. He’d be still a great player and a plus for the team in a big way if he could eliminate them.

 

I wish this would and could work, but I honestly think he has one of the lowest basketball IQ’s of any PG ever to make it to the NBA. If he wasn’t blessed with that other worldly athletic ability, he probably doesn’t even make a community college squad.

 

Yeah, the dude has ZERO accountability. This is the opposite of Mamba Mentality. Kobe would always admit when he had an awful game or made costly mistakes.