155. What Russ can learn from Carmelo Anthony

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seven for confidential help. In Michigan one eight seven seven eight hope n why or text hope and why to four six seven three six nine In New York, tennessee redline one eight hundred eight eight nine nine seven eight nine in Tennessee. Visit www dot one eight hundred gamblert net in West Virginia. All right, welcome to the Lakers Tonight, presented by fan Duel. Here on the volume, I am Jason Tim. Happy Monday, everybody. I hope you all had

a great weekend. There's no Lakers basketball today, but we are going to talk some Lakers. This is a very important week for the Lakers. They go at home against the Milwaukee Bucks tomorrow, which the Lakers have a couple of really good wins this year, but they don't have that bona fide, you know, signature win against a championship contender with all of their guys healthy, and that game against the Bucks is a great example of an opportunity to get that signature win. They have won their last

two games against the Milwaukee Bucks. When Lebron James and Anthony Davis both play, I actually think it's a very good matchup for the Lakers because Lebron and a d person in a physical and mobile enough front court to be able to hang with your honest a little bit and give him some problems. So I like that matchup. It's a good opportunity. Then they go on the road to Portland. It's a back to back, which makes it a little bit weird, but that's a game they should

be able to win. Then they have two days off before a game with the Warriors on Saturday, another great opportunity for a big signature win. Then they have one more game after that after three days off, against the Utah Jazz, and then it's the all too all Star Break. So this is a great opportunity for the Lakers to change the complexion of this season. You know, there's an old saying and everything every saying that's a saying is a saying for a reason, and winning cures everything is

true in this case. If you're sitting at what's that, I think they're twenty eight and twenty six right now. So if you're sitting at thirty and twenty eight, and yeah, you're only two games over five hundred, but you're two games over five hundred with a bunch of signature wins coming off of the trade deadline, hopefully with some reinforcements on the way, and with a week off with the All Star break for guys to get healthy and make

a real run at things to end the season. It's one of those things where as bad as this has been, and it's been really bad, because if you talk about the Lakers as a potential threat to win the Western Conference, someone's gonna laugh you out of the chat. That's the there. They've been a joke this season in that regard, But the potential has always been there. The potential has always been, Hey, we got Lebron and Anthony Davis. So if you get some signature wins. There a little bit of a win

streak coming into tomorrow's game. They've won three consecutive games when Lebron James and Anthony Davis were actually able to finish. Again, not much, but something to build on. And if you build on that with some signature wins in the next week and a half, going into the All Star Break, completely changes the vibe of the season. That's how important this is, and that's what's at stake here. These are good teams. These are teams that are better than the Lakers,

or have been better than the Lakers this season. But they are also teams that the Lakers are capable of beating, and I believe they have a chance to get that done. If you look at the standings, the Lakers are only three and a half games back of that sixth seed. I think the six seed is immensely important to the Lakers because of the fact that winning a playoff series against the Sons or the Warriors is going to be

hard enough. We're gonna talk about that here in a little bit, but it's going to be hard enough if you can buy yourself an extra two weeks of playoff basketball against the team like Memphis or against the team like Utah, a team that the Lakers are very much

capable of beating. Then you have a chance to go into that pivotal matchup against a team like the Warriors or against the team like the Suns and feel more confident in yourself and feel like you have a at least at least a better opportunity to throw your best punch. So big opportunity here before the All Star break. We will be going live after the Milwaukee Bucks game tomorrow, right after the final buzzer, so stay tuned for that

for those of you who are just joining us. This is Lakers Tonight, presented by Fandel here on the volume. We were just talking a little bit about the situation in the standings, but then ainything I wanted to talk about at the top of the show tonight was Russell Westbrook. In a more practical sense. I've been very critical of Russell Westbrook over the course of this season for obvious reasons.

He just hasn't panned out as a basketball fit with this group, and I'm hopeful, as I've said, that the leaguers will at least try to trade him before Thursday However, the far more likely scenario under the circumstances with Russ's contract, the far more likely scenario is that he is still a Laker, at least through the end of the season.

So the question becomes can Russell Westbrook fit alongside Lebron and Anthony Davis because he's had some good games recently, but there are good games that existed within the context of him in an elevated role because of injuries. The truth of the matter is is we're wondering how Russ can fit as a fourth guy because Malik Monk, like it or not, is a better offensive option right now than Russ. So it's even more complicated than can rust

be a number three? We're asking us to be a number four, at least on the offensive offensive end of the floor. So from that standpoint, the question there's basically two schools of thought. You have the let Rusty Russ camp, which namely includes Lebron James. At this point, we saw Lebron after the game against the Nicks the other night, go out of his way to talk about how you know Russ is an instinctive basketball player and that he has to get out of his head and just play

his game. So that's the Lebron school of thought. That's the Russ fans school of thought. All the people that have been defensive over us, that's their school of thought, Like the Lakers have not done a good enough job of letting rusby Russ. But then there's the other school of thought, which is Russ can't be Russ anymore. He's not capable of being Russ anymore. And that's where I land. I look at it, Like the Carmelo Anthony situation when he was out of the league for a couple of years.

There were people that painted that situation as if it was some sort of arabistique. How dare they take one of the game's all time greats and kick him out of the league for a little while. But I looked at it from another perspective. Carmelo Anthony, from a talent perspective, very much belonged in the NBA even in those years. However, he was not willing to do the job that was associated with his lesser role alongside Paul George and Russell Westbrook,

alongside James Harden and Chris Paul. He was unwilling to do that. If you remember, he had press conferences where he complained about the idea that he would never come off the bench. You know, he demanded post touches, and he was less just like when he was in his prime, he was less willing to do the other role player things that we ask. So he's out of the league for a little while and it's kind of a humbling experience.

When he first came back to Portland, they used him a lot as a starter because they had two because of injuries. But the reality was is when Mellow came back, he was much more open to a bench role. He was much more open to his spot up role. He was much more open to giving up those post touches that he loved so much. And the main reason why is because Mellow acknowledged that while his game was declining, he still had elite skills that he brought to the table.

He's an elite spot up shooter and he has been one of the best wide open jump shooters in the league this year. And while he's not slashing to the basket and dunking on people anymore, he can put the ball on the floor once or twice and get to a one or two dribble pull up and he can make that shot attacking a closeout. That's a valuable skill. He's a good rebounder. He's still big and tall and strong, so he can defend in the post, and he can he can box out and do things along those lines.

He honed in on what he was still good at and he trimmed the fat the stuff that he was no longer good at, and as a result, he carved out a very interesting role in this league because he's one of the Laker players this year that outperformed his veteran minimum contract. That's the phase that Russell Westbrook is in right now. He is in the phase that Melo was in while he was in Okay, see in Houston.

He is still thinking he's the old Russ without acknowledging the changes and understanding that his place in the league is dependent on him adapting. You know, Lebron called like I said earlier, Lebron called Russ an instinctive basketball player. Instinctive is just a really nice way of saying he does things without thinking. It's a really nice way of

saying he doesn't make reads. Because when you're talking about the best players in playmaking in the league, the top tier, I think is Lebron and Luka, don Chich, Nicola Yokich and Chris Paul. Those guys are never playing off of instinct there. There's some muscle memory there. They've seen some defenses so many times that they have muscle memory with the way they react. But they're making reads. They look at what the defense is doing and they make the

play that counters what the defense is doing. That is not instinctive. That is muscle memory in basketball. I you, the calling Russ instinctive is just a really nice way of saying he's not a very smart basketball player. Now. When he was in his absolute physical prime, he was so unbelievably athletic that when he played with instinct he was still a huge net positive. But as that has faded in his game, that is no longer the case now.

Instinctive Russ comes with downsides, especially when you look at it through the lens of what I was talking about, where Malik Monk is now coming into the picture as a bona fide ball handling option for this team. With Malik Monk and Lebron James and Anthony Davis, it is even more important for us to be willing to accept

a lesser role. The other way to look at it is kind of like statistical output, right, Like, if Russ is being Russ, you might get twelve assists, but you're also gonna get like seven turnovers, right or six turnover You're gonna get the aggression that leads to the bad you know. So the question becomes, would you rather have twelve assists seven turnover US or four assist one turnover US?

And I think it's obviously the latter. We need Russ to adapt to that lesser role, especially with Malik Monk's emergence as a guy who no longer goes off of instinct but a guy who makes reads. You know, there's this funny moment that happened in a game. Gosh, it was a couple of weeks back. I can't even remember which game it was, but Shaquille O'Neil sit sit in courtside and Check is kind of bantering back and forth with Russ on the court, and he goes, you need

to slow down. And it's kind of hilarious because Shaquille O'Neil is a center, you know, very much, not a you know, a initiating perimeter player. He's the last guy in the world, you would think would be able to offer real advice to Russell Westbrook. But the funny part is is he was dead on and ironically Russ actually admitted it and some of his press conferences that he's been taking advice from Shack about playing slower. It to me, to playing slower is not about like Russ not being

athletic or literally playing slow. To me, it's playing slower mentally. It's slowing the game down and making reads rather than playing on instinct. You understand that when you make that adjustment, if you're Russ, you're gonna lose some of the top end. You're no longer gonna get the crazy scoring up. You know you're not gonna get the thirty two, fourteen, and

twelve anymore. You understand that that's the trade off. But the other side of the trade off is you get a functional role player, just like what you're getting from Carmelo Anthony right now. Carmelo Anthony is a functional role player now when he was not when he was in Houston, and that literally cost him his spot in the league with Russ. I made the comparison yesterday, two days ago, actually that Marcus Smart was an example of a player who kind of had that chaotic attitude, but he brought

so much to the floor defensively. I don't know that Russ is capable of doing both, but I'm very much sure that Russ is capable of doing those dirty work responsibilities that Marcus Smart does. Another cop that I've used in the past is dru Holiday, a player who primarily focuses his energy on the defensive end of the floor and then on offense. He's a power guard. It's about attacking matchups and playing off of two superior offensive players

in Chris Middleton in Jana Santana Coompo. That's kind of like the vibe that Drew Holiday goes for it. There are games where he has the right matchup and he's super aggressive, but there are other games where he steps way back and he feels it out. So to me, that's the transition that Russ needs to make. Rust being Russ is no longer going to work. It needs to be rust being Carmelo. Obviously not in the literal sense, but in terms of that transition that he made. And

then the last element there is the bench. The main reason why you have you know, you know it tradid any sort of like off the bench score I think give like your Jerry Stackhouse type or your Jordan Clarkson type. The main reason why guys like that come off the bench has to do with the fact that in the bench phase of the game, like end first quarter, early second quarter, when bench lineups are out there, it's a little bit easier for you to do the defensive job

right because now you're guarding a bench player. You know, this is why Dwight Howard succeeds so much as a backup center. Dwight Howard is feasting on the lesser talented backup centers in the league. You know, you bring in a Jordan clark center Jerry Stackhouse to feast on the lower quality bench lineups. Now, I don't think you can ever literally Ben s Russ in the sense of taking him out of the starting lineup because of his ego,

and that's unfortunate, but it's just the reality of the situation. However, you can try to line up his minutes in a way that he primarily plays with bench groups. And you've now established after this game against the Knicks and then much earlier this season, you have now established that you can bench Russell Westbrook in a pivotal moment, you have the ability to look him in the face and be like, we are closing this game without you. So he's kind of starting to take on that persona and some of

the characteristics of a bench player. You know, So start him if you have to, but use him as a bench player. I think by doing that you have an ability to make the most of this next four months,

because come in this summer, Russ is gone. I think I think the Lakers are aware enough of how much of a mistake this was that they're not going to sign up for an additional year of this, and moving off of his contract becomes infinitely easier this summer when it's just one year and now teams are basically effectively

trading for cap space in the summer. But you gotta find a way to make this next three or four months work, depending on how long their playoff run is, and the easiest way to do that is to try to convince him to change his role and to try to utilize him more against the lesser players on other

teams by having him attack against the bench. FanDuel Sports Book is an official sports betting partner of Super Bowl fifty six to celebrate New customers can bet five dollars to win two eight in cash on either team to win when you use promo code Jason T when registering. That's right, You'll get your winnings in cold, hard cash, because we know cash is always better than free bets. I will be on the Rams. I think their defensive line is going to control the game, and that's usually

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duel dot com. Gambling problem call one eight hundred next step or text next step to five three three four two in Arizona one eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG dot org slash chat in Connecticut one eight hundred gambler, or visit FanDuel dot com slash rg in Colorado, Indiana, New Jersey, or Virginia one eight seven seven seven seven zero stop in Louisiana one eight hundred to seven zero seven seven for

confidential help. In Michigan one eight seven seven eight hope and why or text hope and why to four six seven three six nine In New York, tennessee redline eight nine nine seven eight nine in Tennessee visit www dot gambler dot net in West Virginia. So I wanted to take some time really quickly to talk about matchups, playoff matchups. Matchups are what determined and in many cases who wins

the title. You know, like the Calves very much beat the Warriors, but maybe the thunder team in two thousand and sixteen, if they get to the finals, maybe that's a different matchup. Maybe the athleticism is different, and maybe it swings the who wins the championship. These styles make fights, and these matchups are very important, and there the two matchups I want will look at tonight are the Lakers

versus the Warriors or the Lakers versus Suns. Chances are, if things don't go really well over the course of the next month, they might have to face one of these teams in the first round, but in all likelihood they're gonna have to face at least one on the way to the title, if not both. Now, the interest thing is on the defensive end of the floor, Lakers on offense. Both teams match up really well with the Lakers and have multiple options. They both have a great

option to throw at Anthony Davis. DeAndre Ayton straight up outplayed Anthony Davison game one of the first round series last year. Now, over the course of the series, Anthony Davis showed that he was better. He had back to back thirty four point games after that, and the Lakers were in commanding position until he got hurt. However, if you're looking at that and you're like man our center, who's not remotely close to our bench, player outplayed Anthony

Davis in a playoff game. That's a huge win. And he's a great defensive option to throw at Anthony Davis. Draymond Green. Same thing for the Warriors in that playing game, the one where Lebron made the game winner, Draymond Green stonewalled Anthony Davison. Post up possessions in that game changed the complexion from the outset. They immediately started for force feeding Anthony Davis at the beginning and he could not score against Raymond Green. That's a huge matchup advantage for

the Warriors. And then on the wing, they both have like that stock key, you know, veteran savvy defender to throw at Lebron for Andre Wodola for the Warriors or Jay Crowded for the Suns. And then they have like the wiry, more athletic option and Andrew Wiggins or Michael Bridges. So on the defensive end, they all match up the Saint.

The main reason why I'm more scared or so to speaker that I think the Warriors have a better chance or or more likely to beat the Lakers has to do that overwhelming star power we watched in that series as the Lakers took a two one lead, they were able to make things very difficult for Chris Paul and Devin Booker. Steph Curry is a super duper star. Is probably the third best player in the world, if not higher. There is no game planning for that. There's no scheme

in the world. There's nothing you can do to slow down Steph Curry. And if you do, we've seen teams outright trap him as far away from the basket as possible. And they have the best short roll big man in the league and dray mung Green to catch that ball and go down the lane and make reads and make you pay on the back end. That offensive element that Steph Curry brings to the table is gonna be the massive trump card in any case. Now, the Lakers are

still capable of winning that matchup. They are capable of physically overwhelming the Warriors in the front court. Their weakness right now is their front court size. It's one of the reasons why they've been connected to Sabonis and Turner so much here on the deadline. However, that's a good

matchup for the Lakers. The differences defensively, the Lakers are gonna have a much harder time trying to contain Steph Curry than they will trying to contain that incessant high pick and roll from Devin Booker and Chris Paul, which, by the way, is kind of playing directly into Frank vogel strong suit. He's very very good at coming up with cool pick and roll coverages to try to shut those teams down. The other element to this is just

veteran experience. No, Chris Paul has been in the league forever, but he has not one and everyone else on the team is very young. The Warriors, they've seen everything, man. They saw a boxing one in the NBA Finals in two thousand nineteen. They've seen hardcore trapping, They've seen everything under the sun. They've seen teams completely ignored Draymond Green. They've seen it all, and they've been there and they've

hoisted the trophy three times. The confidence that you gain from that is inevitably going to be something that allows you to feel comfortable in big moments. If you end up in a pivotal Game five with the Warriors, they're going into that game feeling comfortable. If it's to two and the Lakers are going to Phoenix, Phoenix is gonna feel a little less confident in that type of matchup. They don't have that experience to lean back on. So

it's an interesting matchup I think. I think the Lakers are probably gonna have to go through both of these teams just with the way things break out with the standings. But it's interesting looking at the matchups, and I think the Warriors present, you know, just just with the power of Steph Curry, just that little extra ceiling that they can get to that Phoenix can't get to. Something that

I've talked about a lot on the show. Phoenix just doesn't have at superstar power to lean on really quickly. Before we get out of here tonight, the last thing that I wanted to hit on was this a little bit more on the heart and trade. So Bill Simmons, who is very good friends with Daryl Morey, so he very well make Nelson might know something on this front.

He reported that the Nets would be interested in the trade for for Ben Simmons as long as Seth Curry was included, which inevitably brought up this question like, is it worth it to send out one of your best offensive players alongside Ben Simmons to get a player like James Harden back. Now. In general, my philosophy with this kind of stuff is just get the star and figure out the rest later. It is much easier after the fact to fill in little holes on the periphery when

you have that super duper star power. Now, that can backfire, but it usually backfires when you trade for the wrong star Allah Russell Westbrook, when you give up really good role players and the star you get back is not very good. Like the irony in that trade now is Kyle Kuzma might be a better player than Russ So that backfired because you went after the wrong star. Now. I know James Harden is having one of the worst seasons of his career. I'm aware of that. But he's

a very finicky superstar. He's very moody, he's very dependent on things going his way, and he very easily can get thrown off mentally, and that can end up being a problem for him on the court. We've seen it many times throughout his career, even when he was in Houston, even when things were good, they had a random year and there where he was forty one and basically didn't play any defense the entire season. He's that kind of guy. Now, is he ever gonna be as good as he was

in two thousand and eighteen? Again, maybe not, But I know one thing for sure, even right now, even with as poorly as he's playing, if he's reinvigorated in Houston, excuse me, if he's reinvigorated it in Philly, I know for a fact that he is still one of the top ten players in the NBA. That's how much of an offensive weapon he is. And yes, Seth Curry is a hugely important offensive player for the For the Sixers right now, they have a ton of dribble handoff stuff

that they run with Joel Embiad. That's one of the pillars of their offense. However, James Harden, even in his lesson state, is a significantly better offensive engine than once you got with Seth Curry. Now, do you have to figure things out again? Are you gonna have to change your system? Sure, you gonna have to rebuild chemistry. Sure, but you're undoubtedly a better offensive team with a higher ceiling bringing in James Harden, even if you have to

send out Seth Curry. And the most important detail here is that when you have the super duper stars, the reason why I believe in trading out role players for superstars is because superstars feel so many responsibilities on the floor. You know, like if you had to assigned like a pie chart or pie graph or whatever you wanna call it that lays out the responsibilities that have to be

filled on a basketball court. When the two superstars feel almost the entire chart with what they do, all of a sudden, those little pieces that you have to fill in become way more manageable. You'll you're not gonna be able to find a guy as good as Seth Curry as a role player next to James Harden and Joel Embiid, but you can probably find somebody who's seventy eight is good, which without James Harden is a huge difference because you

need Seth Curry to do everything he's been doing. But when James Harden is in there and all those responsibilities are filled, the job becomes easy. This is why the Lakers won the title. In all their role players looked good. All those guys that got slandered in the summer coming into the season did great. Why because Lebron and Anthony Davis both played like m vps that year, and so what they expected and needed for them. The role players on the periphery was such a small and manageable goal

that they all knocked it out of the park. Every single player panned out that season. Even Rondo, who struggled that whole season, was awesome in the playoffs, at least for stretches. So that's the kind of vibe you gotta look at it the way you gotta look at this. If you're a filling like, yeah, we're losing Seth Curry, Yeah we're losing Ben Simmons, but he wasn't playing anyway.

But you're bringing in James Harden. And by having James Harden and Joe l embiid fill up so much that pie chart, you open the door for yourself to make easy roles available. And with those easy roles, you can slot in lesser players and they can knock those roles

out of the park. So no matter what Philly asks, even if they ask for Tyres Maxie instead of Seth Curry, and in terms of what Brooklyn is asking for, I mean even if they ask for that, even if they ask for both, I don't care what they ask for. You just get the start, because this is not Russell Westbrook. This is not a player that's gonna come in and massively underperformed. He's gonna be reinvigorated. He's gonna be the go to perimeter score. He's gonna be playing alongside one

of the best players in the league. He is going to love it there. He's going to be completely bought in and he's going to look great. I feel very confident in that. So you've gotta do what it takes to get him. Now. The question becomes, do you throw everything at him now or do you wait till the summer. And the reason why you go for it now is because nothing is guaranteed. The Lakers won the title in that's great, but look at how the two seasons since

then have gone very easily. Could have gone the other way, could have been injuries, and maybe this is the year they're healthy. But you need shots at it, You need pulls at the slot machine because it is like it's like a slot machine winning the title. That's how hard it is to win. And you buy yourself an extra poll on the slot machine when you make the deal now instead of waiting to the summer. If you wait

till the summer, there's no guarantee. Next year is going to be the year it all pans out anyway, and you double your chances if you do it now. So I hope, hope Philly puts all the chips on the table and gets James Harden because I think it will be the best for them. And we talked as we talked about on Saturday, I love the Ben Simmons fit in Brooklyn, filling in a lot of responsibilities that have never been filled in on that team. Alright, guys, that is all I have for tonight. This will be in

our podcast feed shortly. We will be back right after the Bucks game tomorrow night, right after the final buzzer. As always, I appreciate your support and we will see you tomorrow. The volume