Monday Mailbag

of games coming up over the next week. I think we play four times in the next six nights if I remember correctly, because I think we played Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday off, play Friday, Saturday off, and then play Sunday. There's gonna be a lot of Laker basketball over the course of the next week, a lot of postgame shows. So I wanted to take a second today to hit some of your guys questions, and you guys ask some

really good questions and I appreciate that. Um, we're gonna talk a lot of Russell westbrook We're gonna talk a lot about the trade deadline and what this roster specifically is going to be looking like moving forward. But let's

start with Russ. So uh, Basically, in the press conference today, he seemed defiant would be the word that I would use to describe the way he was acting in the press conference, talking about how he's tired of people, you know, tired of paying attention to what people think he should be and just try to be himself, and pointing out that he's not gonna be able to put up the same statistical numbers that he used to put up in years past, which I think is interesting for a couple

of reasons, because I think it's kind of lack of situational awareness. It doesn't seem like he understands what this team needs from him, and they do. The team needs Russ to be Russ. That goes without saying I think there's a there's a ton of positivity that comes with

his brand of chaos. The amount of rim pressure that he generates is always good for a basketball team in one shape or the other, whether it's him finishing, or whether it's guys coming in behind for offensive rebounds off of the attention he draws, or him kicking out the three point shooters, or just a general effect he can have when a guy is putting his head down and getting to the rim all the time, and what it does to collapse defenses and the types of openings that

it creates for everyone else that goes without saying, and that to me is Russ being Russ. Yes, we need Russ to be Russ in the sense that we need him to continue to be that relentless basket attacker that goes without saying. However, there's another side to Russ being Russ that he absolutely has to try to rein in and it will forever be the thing that will rear its ugly head for us in big moments until he learns that lesson, And that, to me is what frustrates

me about that lack of situation situational awareness. Again, Rus, we want you to do all of those things that you do so well. It's just a matter of taking the extra effort necessary to fight against your own weaknesses. You have a weakness that manifests in a desire to ball watch when you're off the ball, whether it's because

you want rebounds or whether it's because you're saving your legs. There, I understand the motivation behind you doing that, but it hurts your team, specifically at the end of close games, So you have to fight your own human nature to put in effort that goes against what your natural instincts are. You have to pay attention to a shooter off the ball when he's made seven threes in an NBA basketball game.

That is your job on any given play. When you get un focused and start focusing on things that are outside of the team concept, like your own individual rebounding numbers, or I want to take a rest possession here, when you do that, especially at the end of games, it hurts the team. That's what we're talking about us. We

don't care about your style of play. I from the very beginning, from the moment this trade took place, I never cared about his style of play in the way that would fit with what the Lakers were trying to do. That never mattered to me, you know, because they're smart basketball players. Lebron is arguably the smartest basketball player to ever play the game. So I never worried about them figuring out a way to make Russ useful. Over the course of a hundred possessions or a thousand possessions or

ten thousand possessions. What I've always worried about is the possession. What I've always worried about is the key moment at the end of a big game, at end of a playoff series, where he his worst attributes rear their ugly head. Like I said, losing focus on a shooter off the ball, or making a poor read in half court offense or in transition offense that wastes a possession, that hemorrhages an opportunity for your team. That's always been my biggest worry.

That the that that's the part that he has to focus on. We want you to be Russ, We want you to be all of the things that make you great, But in the key moments of the biggest games, you have to find a way to stay mentally aware of what your job is. And on defense, if that's on the ball, there's a responsibility that comes with it. If it's off the ball, there's a responsibility that comes with

it depending on who you're guarding. Do the job. And on offense, understand that if you're on a team with Anthony Davis and Lebron, unless specifically in the flow of the game, Lebron is asking you to make a play, you need to make high percentage basketball plays. If it's not there, kick it out if it's if you catch the ball like on that deflection from Lebron, take a beat, take a minute to pull it out and reset the offense. You don't have to be a bull in a china

shop all the time. Those are the specific moments where Russ has to fight against his own nature, and that's been my biggest fear with this the whole time. It remains to be seen whether or not he'll ever be able to conquer that, and I honestly, I honestly don't know. That's like I said in the pod the other day.

He could look amazing for the rest of the season, he could look amazing in the first round of the playoffs, he could look amazing in the second round, and I would still be terrified that he would lose sight of that in the biggest moment. Why because we've just seen him do that too many times in his career, and

so that's kind of where I'm at with us. He his personality, he tends to kind of turn himself into a little bit of a victim and kind of batting up the hatches and be like, it's just me against the world type of attitude. And again, like the Laker fan base can be a lot, and not because they're any worse than any fan base, just because there's a lot of them in terms of their sheer numbers. But the truth of the matter is is what they're asking for you is not for you to stop being yourself.

They're just asking you, in the big moments of big games two, not be our your own worst enemy, to understand what your job is as the third most important player on the team. All right, let's get to some of these mail bad questions. So first question from Byron, has th h t s trade value diminished? We actually got a couple of th ht related questions in the mail bag. There's that specific one, and then another one

asking does th ht need to be traded? And then another one saying what gettable guys do the Lakers need to trade for to capitalize on this window. So I want to I want to hit on all of them at at the same time. So, first of all, has th ht s trade value diminished? I don't think so. Um. The reason why it's pretty simple. If you look at the way NBA g M s are valuing young prospects, They're not looking for the same things that we're looking for as a contending team, trying to decide where he

fits in our rotation. THHD is not playing well for the Lakers right now. That goes without saying. However, if you're looking at him from the outside, he's not in a role right now that is beneficial to him on a bunch of different levels. For for starters, he's a baby, he's young, and he's playing with veterans that have a championship expectation That in and of itself makes it so that the timelines don't match up. That inherently is going to put him in a situation where he looks over

his skis a lot of the time. Secondly, he is a downhill driving guard and the Lakers have struggled with establishing spacing this entire season. That We've talked a lot over the course of the year about how Anthony Davis, Lebron and Russell Westbrook are three of the best rim pressure players at their position of all time, and they've struggled on offense to make things look easy in the system that we have a lot of that has to

do with Russ. By the way Russ makes it harder for the other stars, and obviously, with Anthony Davis is poor shooting, and then him playing alongside th HT a lot, Russ has had it harder with his own spacing. This team is kind of its own worst enemy in that regard. As we've talked about a lot in terms of the way that the direction that this team should be heading, what that looks like. We've always said that with Russ, if he's going to be a big part of your team,

you have to make some concessions. You probably can't play Anthony Davis anywhere except for at the five. If he's gonna be with Russ. You probably can't play another limited shooting guard like th HT next to him because of Russ and his limitations. Accepting the fact that Russ is gonna be here in the long term, accepts the fact that you have some lineup constraints and what you can do with your guys. So I don't think it's a big shock that th HT has struggled now if you're

looking at him from the outside looking in. Of course, if he guys, if he was killing it for us, then he'd be valued like a star because he's already in all defense caliber type of player with what he can do to disrupt guys on the ball. So if you're a d M and you're watching th h T and he's killing it, now we're talking about a guy that has massive, massive trade value and probably would be untouchable even for the Lakers. With him struggling, guys are

almost exclusively looking at his potential. They're looking at what what kind of plays is he making every night that demonstrates what his ceiling could be. You know, does he project to be a good defensive player? Does he project to be a good shooter? And I think in both of those cases he does. Even though he has struggled like hell to shoot the ball this year, he shoots the ball really well from the free throw line, and

he's got great touch around the rim. Those are two things that specifically portend to a player eventually becoming a good shooter. And then defensively, it's off ball mistakes and things like that. Those are things that naturally happen with young players. But there's just this mountain of on ball

potential that already has a positive impact on games. So if you're a team like the Detroit Pistons or like the Minnesota Timber rules are like the Sacramento Kings of your team that is limited right now and is looking towards the future. When you're evaluating players, you don't care that th HD is necessarily struggling right now. You're thinking about what he can be. So I don't think his potential has necessary or excuse me, his value has taken any sort of dip around the league now looking at

them whether or not he should be traded. When we're talking when we originally came up with this concept, when the Jeremy Grant trade was originally floated around this is about a month ago. I told you guys that it should be kind of like the trade version of a game time decision. As we get close to the deadline,

you make a read on the situation. If the season is a total loss, and you know, let's say Anthony Davis had suffered a serious injury that kept him out for the season, then yeah, you hang onto th h T. There's just no reason to flip him at that point, certainly not for this season, so you might as well give him another year to develop and make that call

again next season. If the team is just massively struggling, if it looked so horrible and all the guys were healthy, Like if Lebron and a D were all playing, if all the role players were playing and they were still hovering around five hundred and couldn't beat anybody, then you might be like, hey, this is a lost cause. Let's hang onto th HT. But if the team is trending in the right direction, or if the potential is still there and th HD isn't an integral part of that,

I think you have to trade him. If th h T was playing extremely well and filling a much needed role on the team, and the team was trending in the right direction all as part of that, then you keep th HT because why would you trade th HT for another player that's more or less going to be doing the same thing that he's doing. But I think we're trending towards the fourth option, which is the team

is still trending in the right direction. Obviously it's hard to see right now with the five game losing streak, but the team was playing well before the injuries. COVID plays a huge part of that. I think in the locker room there still is belief that this team can make a run, and I personally believe that as well, especially if Anthony Davis can come back and come back healthy and come back mobile. But we are now in the situation where th h T is clearly not a fit.

Regardless of how you feel about the potential for this season, th HD doesn't factor much into that. He he's bringing something defensively, but he still has some of those young guy mistakes, and offensively, he just flat out isn't a fit. He's not a good enough stationary shooter, and as a guy who attacks the rim, we just have a redundancy in that specific role. We have so many guys who already do that for us that his value there isn't as significant as it would be elsewhere. So I think

we are heavily trending towards th HT being traded. Now. He can't be traded until January, so we still have a little bit of time for that to change. He could suddenly start shooting the laces off the basketball and start playing great on both ends of the floor. Now suddenly it's like you upgraded that position anyway, and then you make a call at the time. But as as the way things are trending right now, I think we're

trending towards trading him. Now to that last question about who you trade him for, I think there's two directions to go, and that again is something we're gonna learn a lot about over the course of the next three weeks. If we are trending as a team that seems to be massively succeeding with small ball, So if Lebron at center lineups as we get to January, if Lebron at center lineups are still killing it, then at that point I think we got to look back to the wing market.

That's where that Jeremy Grant trade makes a ton of sense. If we're at January and Anthony Dave this is still at least a month out from returning, and our Lebron at center lineups are struggling, then we have to go after a big At that point, that's where we look more in the direction of Miles Turner. So again we make the read when we get to that point in the season. If we're trending as a small ball team,

we lean heavily into another wing. If we're struggling as a small ball team, then we need to go back to looking at the center market. A big part of that is everybody getting healthy. I don't think we'll truly see what the small ball Lakers are capable of until

Trevor Reason gets back in the lineup consistently. Until you see lineups that are Trevor Reads, A Lebron, James Stanley Johnson, Austin Reeves, Russell Westbrook, where you can switch all five positions and you're athletic at all five positions, you can run up and down the floor, everybody can put the ball on the floor and attack a close out. That's when you're really going to see that peak l A crip l A Clipper, Ellie Crippers, Ellie Clippers style uh offense.

That's when we're gonna get to see that um and really make an evaluation of what this team can do in terms of a small ball team. Alright, moving on, Okay, our next question right now, who do you guys want out of the starting lineup? This is from our friend George's th h t Or Dwight and who would you

replace him with? So this kind of goes back to the basic set of lineup rules that I've been kind of harping out all season, and I can't take credit for the idea originally because this idea was conceptualized by our friend Anthony Irwin over at Silver Screen and Roll. But essentially rule number one is you can't play Russ with the traditional center that inherently crosses a threshold of minimum spacing that the team can no longer function when

we go that route. So what that tells us is immediately, if you had to choose between benching th h T or Dwight, you have to bench Dwhite. And not only at we're leaning heavily into this small ball in our Lebron at center lineups are working. It's our Carmelo Anthony at center lineups that are getting absolutely destroyed. So the only way to avoid that is to stagger Lebron and Dwight. And the only way to do that is to bring Dwight off the bench, So I would start Lebron at center,

in which case you have to go with wings. So when healthy, the way that I'd like to see the starters break out if you insist on starting th HT, that's one thing I tend to think he should be staggered in a similar way to the Dwight concept. Try to keep him and Russ off the floor as much as possible with each other. There's gonna be some overlap because they're athletic and young. Excuse me, t h T s young. They're both gonna play thirty something minutes. There's

gonna be some overlap. But preferably if you could have those guys staggered, you would. But assuming that they're going to start th HT because I just think that seems to be the direction the team wants to go. You got Russ at point guard, you got t h T at the two, you have Lebron at the five. If you have a reason at the four, now we need someone to plug into that spot. To me, in my opinion, with the limited shooting with that lineup, I think you

have to go with a guy like Wayne Ellington. Now, if you pull th h T out and you get Ellington at the two, now we can bring another wing in there. Go with someone like Austin Reeves or Stanley Johnson. Now we can kind of keep that baseline athleticism while also having the shooting there. But most importantly, you have to take Dwight out of the starting lineup. It's the only way to properly get our center rotation down to where we always have a passable defensive center on the floor.

Lebron for thirty thirty four minutes of the game. Dwight for you know, fifteen twenty minutes of the game with a little bit of overlap. That's the only way to make this small ball thing work. If you lean into that for three weeks with Lebron and Dwight playing center, we can get a really good read on whether or not the small ball thing works. And then at January go we're good on small ball, let's go get another wing or Okay, this isn't working, a d is going

to be out awhile, let's go get another center. That's the easiest way for us to discover that is to lean heavily into our best small ball rotation right now and try to see what we can get out of it. Alright, let's see, do you think we trade Russ or this is our team come playoff times. So this has been the most common thing that's been thrown around over the

course of the last couple of days. So I would not trade Russ, And I think it's a lot sillier than people think to even consider that route for a couple of reasons. First of all, if you try to trade Russ. All you're getting back is salary filler. Nobody out there in the league is going to give up anything of real value for Russ because Russ has no

true value. The reason why is because even with all of the good that he brings to the table at his contract number, he is absolutely a negative asset that goes without saying. It was kind of prizing in in my opinion, that we even had to give up a first round pick to get Russ in the trade to begin with. That was confusing to me. But bottom line, Russ doesn't bring a lot of trade value, if at all, So you're you're just hoping for some sort of partner

out there to throw salary filler at you. At that point, there's a massive there's a massive diminishing return. So let's say we got three salaries a twenty million dollar guy, a ten million dollar guy, and a seven million dollar guy. Chances are those guys coming back are all considered overpaid,

otherwise that team wouldn't be giving them up. So then you ask yourself, what really is the difference between a Stanley Johnson, a Kendrick Nunn, and a Trevor Reza and this random twenty million guy, this random ten million guy, in this random seven million guy, that some team is offloading and bringing back Russ, you know what I mean, Like, that's what you gotta tell yourself, Like you're probably not

getting high quality role play years back for Russ. So then what you have to tell yourself is Russ is what he is at this point, and he certainly is going to be around for the rest of this season.

When you accept that, the only the only proposed Russell West Pork trade that I actually even considered to be viable is if, for whatever reason, Joe l embad is a huge fan of us, and Joel Embiad is going up to Darryl Morey's office and knocking on the door every day and saying, please give me Russ, Please give me Russ, Please give me Russ. Then you can talk about that Ben Simmons trade, and now we're talking about upgrading Russ into a significantly better player. But that's a

pie in the sky dream. It's not it's it's extremely unlikely to happen. Darryl Morey would probably still do everything in his power to tell Joel to just shut up and leave him alone. So the reality is that's not happening. So once you accept the fact that Russ is around, understand that kind of what we've been doing in the last couple of weeks is our best option. Try to find guys like Stanley Johnson fringe NBA players that bring

an elite skill to the table. In this case, Stanley Johnson's elite skills his size and athleticism on the wing. You know, Darren Collison is could potentially and we'll see over the course of the next week, he could potentially be an upgrade over what we're getting out of the rondo position. So what you do is on the margins, try to find the best quality minimum players we can find to bolster the roster. Get rid of the dead weight, drop the DeAndre Jordan's types, drop the region rondo types.

If Genie wants to save some money, drop Avery Bradley, it's hard to imagine that, but he doesn't have a contract guarantee. He might be the best opportunity to swap out for one of these guys off the street while not killing your cap sheet. That would or your tax bill. That would be an interesting direction to go. But bottom line is you have to build on the margins. In the trade deadline. Th HD obviously doesn't fit with this group. As of right now, we have a decent sample size

this year. His value is much higher elsewhere in the league than it is on our roster. Trying to flip him for a high level wing like a Jeremy Grant that could significantly upgrade the roster. But the bottom line is they have to find a way to upgrade around the Russ, A D and Lebron corps. There isn't any real option to try to move Russ that wouldn't essentially

just be an addition by subtraction. The only way it could potentially help the team that that at that point is if you truly believe Rus is hurting the team, which I don't necessarily think is the case. Russ isn't hurting the team. Russ brings a lot of good with his bad. You could just make a case that what he does to impact winning is significantly beneath what his

statistical output is. That I think kind of goes without saying, um, the last thing I wanted to hit at, And this is something that uh uh Pete from like a Film Room did a really good job of explaining today and It's something that I was pointing out this entire summer and something that I think is an important detail that

gets lost in the Russ conversation. Russ has had a great deal of struggles ever since Kevin Durant left, and had some struggles and pivotal moments with Kevin Durant in Okay see, But there was a huge difference between those situations and what this situation was supposed to be. This situation was supposed to be the first time in Russ's entire career where he would be the third best player

on the team. The the perfect scenario for him to pull back on all of the overdoing it stuff that Russ has been famous for and try to be more selective with the way that he puts his imprint on the game. That was what this was supposed to work like. That was where the optimism was supposed to come from.

But because of the Lebron injury and injuries plural and because of the Anthony Davis injury, for the most part this season, he's been our second best player, which has fallen more in line with what he had and okay see, with he had in Washington, with what he had in Houston with what he had with Paul George too after KD was gone. The point being, he has been in a situation where we've needed Russ to just let it all out on the floor and see what happens. And

a lot of the bat has come with that. And again, this is the last stat that I keep hammering home, and it's the reason for optimism here. It's the silver lining. When Russ Lebron and Anthony Davis are on the floor without a center this season, they are outscoring teams by almost eleven points per one possessions. That is what it's

supposed to look like. Russ in the tertiary role, massively cutting back on his shot attempts, focusing more energy on the defensive end of the floor, being the third best player on the floor. That's what it was supposed to look like. We haven't seen much of that yet. We need to see a lot more to see if it's viable. But that's where the optimism comes from. The optimism stems from the fact Russ can be more selective with his chaos, his brand of chaos if he's in a tertiary role

rather than in a secondary role. And I'm hopeful that will get a good thirty forty game stretch after Anthony Davis gets back with all of those guys healthy. Also huge silver lining after the struggles to start this year, it's forced the team to lean more into shooting in small ball. We didn't do much of that to start the year. A lot of those Lebron russ A D minutes looked ugly when he was playing with DJ and

when they were playing with Dwight. So getting them in this sort of situation where they're actually leaning into their strengths, it could work. I just got to build on the margins. Gotta flip THHD and Kendrick Nunn for something of value on the wing. Got to make the obvious decisions like keep Stanley Johnson, drop guys like DeAndre Jordan's. If Darren Hollisin manifest into a quality point guards, swap him out

for Rondo. We have to make improvements on the margins because we're not as good as we need to be. But that's where the silver lining comes from. The optimism stems entirely from the fact that Russ in a tertiary role can have a more positive impact on winning than he has had in previous seasons. Al Right, guys, gonna keep it short today, That's all I have. This is gonna be on dash Radi out tomorrow morning at seven am Pacific Standard time, and it will also be on

our podcast feed here shortly. I appreciate your support, as always have been blown away by how many of you guys have come to hang out with us in our post game spaces. We're gonna have a bunch of postgame shows the rest of this week Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Friday night, and Sunday. All Right, you guys, enjoy the rest of your night and have a good rest of your week, and we'll talk to you tomorrow