Russell's floor = Scott Machado but I really doubt he's that bad and I think he's already way better than guys like Trey Burke. Blame Byron Scott's offense and lineups. He's using both Clarkson and Randle as ball handlers when Russell runs with the starters. When they run a high pnr, horns or Princeton chin, Russell is sharing ballhandling with Clarkson, a lot of times having to defer. When they do Princeton high post, it's basically dump the ball to Randle at the elbow and clear the paint for him to slash. When Russell runs with the second unit, he has to playoff Huertas, who's a better playmaker at this point in his career. Then you have Kobe with his 30% usage rate Mudiay gets the keys to the offense which is pnr with space shooters. Russell is being used as a space shooter over half the time. And when he starts hitting 3's, he gets pulled. Scott's a moron
It was a combination of Byron Scott telling people he's good a developing point guards and the FO thinking they could land an all-star big like Aldridge during FA
Smart/Russell. Who do yall take? The more I think about it, Randle's stock falling the previous year really hurt the lakers. They could have ended up with Smart and Okafor rather than Russell and Randle.
smart was off the board already when randle was picked but interesting questions nonetheless. Way too early to tell at this point though. Especially Russell still being a teenager
Payton looks like he was the best choice for them at that pick, at least better than Randle. Dario Saric is gonna be good too imo.
Wait til Kobe leaves. Right now he's the 4th option offensively. Clarkson is basically a PG so he likes to have the ball, then Kobe gets his shots. You guys gotta be patient. Russell will show potential throughout the season with dime passes, step backs and crafty finishing.
Yeah Smart was 6th and Randle was 7th, but there were tons of reports that the Lakers threw red flag at Randle that drove his stock down. And due to the fact that Boston has very few viable big men, they might have chosen him. But yeah I agree, its early. I think Okafor shows the most promise of all of them though.
To be fair the kid basically got thrown into the wolves when he's clearly not ready for big minutes in the NBA just yet. Right now his head is all messed up and he's afraid to take shots.
Well It did just throw people off because at the time the lakers didn't have a big man. And they did have clarkson who is a combo guard himself who played pg last year for them
Actually, one of the Lakers' fears was that they would have Okafor and Randle as their starting frontcourt, which would automatically make it one of the worst defensive frontcourts in the entire league. And to earlier posters I would just like to throw out there that Smart's regular season stats last year were 8/3/3 on 36% shooting. Through only four games, Russell's states are 8/2/3 on 34% shooting. And this is with decidedly poor shooting (supposedly one of his strengths) and getting very inconsistent minutes on the floor. I think it's far from decided that Smart/Okafor would have been or is better than Russell/Randle. I know it's too much to ask but let's wait a couple years.
They must be thrilled with the impact Hibbert's had on their defense. They've jumped all the way from 29th in the league to... 29th in the league.
I'm more surprised at how people seem to talk about Randle like he's someone to build your team around.
Russell doesn't look good but he has some potential. I normally give rookies until there 2nd year to really judge them. It takes time to adjust to the speed, wait til he meet the western conference elite. Those point guards are gonna make his head speed. He may need another 2 years until he contributes. He really has to work on his quickness, he's pretty slow for a pg.
The Lakers are just an awfully run team. Hibbert as essentially your sole defender is only effective if you have someone who can back him up when he has to sit. The first three games Scott had the Bass/Kelly combo coming off the bench for C/PF, and it was a disaster both offensively and defensively. The game where he finally gets the bright idea to put a Black/Bass combo out there, and he only plays Hibbert for 17 minutes. I really don't know what they're doing.
