He's on a minutes restriction and it's his first game in 2+ weeks. If anyone can bounce back fast, I put my money on Russ. I'm glad he didn't overexert himself, although some of those shots were driving me crazy. He needs to stick to pre-bubble Russ shot selection. He will shake most of the rust off next game against OKC. Will be 95% ready after that game. Luckily we only need 25 good minutes from him against OKC, and he gave us good defense, 6 rebounds, 7 assists and a steal. This team is about to get better. Russ stretches the opponent's defense by forcing them to be excellent both in transition and half court.
Conclusion: Not as explosive as ever. But still a net positive. If for no other reason as it makes the rotation longer.
Yeah that explosive as ever they can just shove up their ass. No reason to overhype Russ or put pressure on him. His shot selection was bad, but the rest was solid. Creating open looks at least. Also happy to see him just let the game come to him.
"Rotation" and "longer" don't belong together in Mike D'Antoni's playoffs, but yes, the quality and the paycheck of the returning player is higher than the player getting shoved back to the bench. I will note that lots of guys saw PT yesterday as a result of the blowout, the exception to the D'Antoni Rule.
He went 9 deep in the first half, too. Heck in the first quarter. But he has an EXTREMELY short leash on BMac right now. He played 2.5 quick minutes in the first quarter... was +4. Then got subbed out for Rivers who finished the quarter -3. But then BMac got under 2 minutes to start the second quarter was -5. Got subbed out for House, who went -7 in his stint. Of note with BMac, in the first quarter stint, it was Harden/BMac/House/Green/Covington. Not "so small". In the 2nd quarter it was Russ/Gordon/Bmac/Green/Tucker. So REALLY small. Its one game... BUT not hard to see, you don't really want BMac as your small ball SF, and especially not when your PF and C are super small as well. I like "small ball" but have never loved 3 guard small ball lineups.
I admit that I didn't get to see the game...hell, it didn't even record correctly; but it seems "9 deep in the first half" is really un-D'Antoni-ish. I can see the blowout didn't occur until the second half, so I'm surprised. Maybe Mike is like, "I'll take Indiana if I have to, but Laurel HATES the cold weather, so this is going to be MY election season. Do what I have to."
Not everyone is like harden who can comeback after 4moths off and drop 49 on the mavs and luka in his first game back. Russ is going to be Russ for the lakers series. Im not worried
He said before the Russ injury that he wanted to be 9 deep this playoffs. but that depended on BMac and for some e reason as I noted he hasn’t trusted him. Has he played great? No. Though he was good game 1. But with a player like BMac that’s about who he is playing with as much as how he’s playing. The difference between Harden/BMac/green/Tucker/Covington ... and Russ/EG/BMac/Green/Tucker is night and day, no?? Not necessarily offensively, but defense and rebounding. Harden is a PG that can guard centers. And having Covington instead of Gordon makes you bigger and better defensively and rebounding. I know we all like to play armchair coach or GM, but this is night and day, to me. I love how they attacked Dort and SGA. Make Dort and offensive player and SGA a defensive player. Genius. Almost to the extent that unless Dort can hit shots, there’s almost nothing Donovan can do about it. Though tbf, Donovan is also a pretty mediocre coach, imo. With Russ out of the game or playing meh, his team, imo, has more talent. But somehow he’s managed to turn Gallinari into a negative offensive player, confuse SGA and not make use of Adams properly. But anyway, this isn’t about Donovan but MDA. And relative time Russ, I think him being back at least gives MDA more options and he’ll hopefully figure out what works. He adjusted to take advantage of specific players beautifully. Hopefully he can do the same rotation wise. I get it’s easier said than done. Fouls, how players are playing, what the other team is doing, etc. This is a good site to visualize game flow by rotation. http://popcornmachine.net/ the 3 guard lineup yesterday is going to look good because of the second half. Thunder couldn’t figure out what to do with Dort, then Schroeder got thrown out. But even if the first half to me, the Rockets seem better when it’s less three guard and more an actual SF. Or if you are going to do actual 3 guard lineup, Harden has to be one of those guards cause he plays like a SF defensively.
