Kilroy wrote:Dr Aki wrote:Weaknesses that he had as a rookie (undersized, insufficient length, inconsistent effort, lack of shooting, lack of post-up, not great screens, lack of right hand, lack of interior and perimeter defense) are still there.
Heck a lot of the time, most of the assists he gets are from perimeter handoffs.
Impending 2018/19 payday to muck up the 2018 plan really caps it off.
At least he's in shape for preseason, he really needs to show something
How can that be a negative? Part of the handoff is him using his body and footwork to clear space for the shooter. It's brilliant, and no one benefited more from it than Russell. No he has Ball, KCP and Ingram he can assist in the same way, not to mention Lopez...
He doesn't shoot many 3s but his eFG last season was .499... For reference, Dray Green's eFG was .481 on lower Volume and more minutes. So it's safe to say Randle shoots just fine for "Walton's System"... Dray shoots more 3s but his percentage is only .308...
And that's with 5 seasons under his belt.
And Dray shoots like 99% of the time with his dominant hand too...
Randle's job was to distribute from the perimeter. When he got into the post, which was extremely rare, he did OK but that wasn't really his role.
Effort is subjective... How much effort should the second or even first best player on the court any given night, put in on a team that was clearly tanking? He may not be a hustle guy but he's clearly effective... 16.3 PER on a bottom feeder team...
Obviously, Dray is a better defender, but he's also on a much better team that understands how to play excellent team D. So he has help. Randle was pretty much the only person even trying to play D in the starting lineup last season.
Randle has room for improvement obviously, but he's only 22, only starting his 3rd year in the league, and is already a top 20 to 25 PF...
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2683788-nba-player-power-rankings-brs-top-30-power-forwards-at-the-halfway-pointhttp://insider.espn.com/nba/hollinger/statistics/_/position/pfAnd he has gotten better each season so far. Not sure how that's even arguable.
He's going to get paid what he's going to get paid... But I think you need a guy like him on this team. They can't all be finesse 3pt shooters... Which is why they got KCP and why we need Randle.
a lot of the time, the creating space wasn't there either, the hand off was a simple hand off and russell or young or whoever was doing a lot of the work. this is where the effort part of the equation comes in, i just saw that russell or young or lou could've had more time and space to get a better shot. other times, it was randle on the break to a trailer, which was nice, so he gets credit for that. hopefully we'll see that a hell of a lot more seeing as we're bound to have way more transition opportunities this year, i don't think he'll ever be as good as odom though
on defense, i get that he tries, sometimes. this was a problem for everyone though and this criticism is laid out on everyone, but for randle, it was magnified. it's often not entirely his fault, but the bigs were very often holding the bag at the end of possessions where the perimeter defender died on the screen and the bigs weren't quick enough to stay in front of defenders, and as a result, it was easy shot after easy shot. in this day and age, if your 21 yo power forward can't play competent defense on the perimeter, it's pretty much a given he'll be a negative perimeter defender his whole career. i'm holding out that the culture changes around defense as well (offense wasn't an issue last year, it was always defense that will define how far the team will go)
so hopefully randle will start to "get it" this year, his cost-controlled deal is overall positive at the moment, considering the only positive value attribute is his rebounding, he fills that niche, however this all changes in 2018 when he's due for a big payday.
i'm sure you'll find that 3 years ago when we picked him #7, these were all the same issues that were apparent at the time, an undersized bully-ball PF with comparatively short arms, with not much shooting and not much defense. we wanted randle to carve out a niche in the league, develop a positive-value NBA-level skill and it seems as if the only ones he has (rebounding, energy (but not concentration)) are still the only ones he already had coming out of kentucky
so yes, you can infer that i'm disappointed in julius, sure he's improved from his rookie year to his 2nd year through the dysfunction, but now he's onto his 3rd year, i'd like to have the problem of wanting to keep him over his 12.45 mil cap hold, not concocting trades to dump deng with randle as the bait