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DJ did a pretty good job, lol

Meh. DJ's focus right now needs to be on basketball and trying to earn his overpaid contract. Not commercials. Not lip sync battles. Basketball. You know, his job, where he's been putting in zero effort all season. Not really interested in watching those clips after how DJ made Frank Kaminsky look like a superstar today.

MartinToVaught wrote:Meh. DJ's focus right now needs to be on basketball and trying to earn his overpaid contract. Not commercials. Not lip sync battles. Basketball. You know, his job, where he's been putting in zero effort all season. Not really interested in watching those clips after how DJ made Frank Kaminsky look like a superstar today.

oh shut up.

Neddy wrote:

MartinToVaught wrote:Meh. DJ's focus right now needs to be on basketball and trying to earn his overpaid contract. Not commercials. Not lip sync battles. Basketball. You know, his job, where he's been putting in zero effort all season. Not really interested in watching those clips after how DJ made Frank Kaminsky look like a superstar today.

oh shut up.

Truth hurts, I guess. After how Doc and his teammates literally flew down to Houston to beg him to stay, DJ should never give anything less than 110% on the court. Instead, we get to see dominant performances from Hakeem Kaminsky and JaVale O'Neal. Oh, and lip sync battles.

MartinToVaught wrote:

Neddy wrote:

MartinToVaught wrote:Meh. DJ's focus right now needs to be on basketball and trying to earn his overpaid contract. Not commercials. Not lip sync battles. Basketball. You know, his job, where he's been putting in zero effort all season. Not really interested in watching those clips after how DJ made Frank Kaminsky look like a superstar today.

oh shut up.

Truth hurts, I guess. After how Doc and his teammates literally flew down to Houston to beg him to stay, DJ should never give anything less than 110% on the court. Instead, we get to see dominant performances from Hakeem Kaminsky and JaVale O'Neal. Oh, and lip sync battles.

what truth? your propaganda? one whos got his butt hurt is you and your negative nancy crap. put a cork it in. frankly I though he put a great performance doing Seal's song. he is our lone allstar. he has been a first defensive team center, now is a gold medal winner. let the young man have some gooddamn fun, which you clearly have no understanding of. you don't like this current clipper team? go somewhere else. you don't like DJ's peformance? then write your crap on some other thread. not everyone is as miserable as you.

Like Popovich likes to say, "it's just basketball, get over yourselves"

In the end, these guys are just playing basketball, a game for entertainment. If we expect them to not have fun in the thousands of hours of free time they have and instead be focusing on basketball 24/7, then we are bordering on being crazy. We don't even ask that of people with their work that they should not have fun if there are any issues at work and should instead be focusing on how they can do their job better 24/7. In fact not focusing on that all the time can be what allows people to be more productive when they are working. There's still life outside of basketball, it was a funny performance, let's not take basketball too seriously.

If it makes us feel any better, Kaminsky recently dropped 24/7 on 64% FG vs GS, 17/6 on 55% FG vs OKC and earlier in the season he had 22/3 on 57% FG vs Houston as well as 23 pts with 82% FG vs Memphis. So he's put on a show against most of the WC playoff teams.

It may be unpopular to do this, but I have to agree and defend M2V here. Yeah, it's only basketball and DJ should allow himself to have some fun, but it's not just an occasional thing for him. He's always seemed more concerned with having fun and being part of festivities than actually putting in the work to be a great player.

Granted he's wired differently and at this point, he is what he is, but it's hard to talk about seriously contending for a championship when our starting center and defensive anchor is known for being more casual than committed. DJ made a big deal about not doing the dunk contest until he made the All-Star team, then proceeded to put on a dud of a performance that wouldn't even match his pregame warm-up efforts.

Doc had to blow smoke up his butt in calling him a part of our big 3 and even comparing him to Bill Russell in order to motivate him when he's not at either Paul or Griffin's level nevermind that of arguably the best center to ever play the game and undoubtedly the ultimate winner and teammate who was the foundation of the Boston Celtics' dynasty.

I understand given our circumstances that it's not easy to keep hearing the same negative things over and over from the same person--there's definitely a limit to tolerating this--but Martin2Vaught points to a harsh truth that is essentially one of the reasons why we're not really serious contenders hoping beyond hope for lightning to strike in the playoffs.

At the same time and for better or worse, DeAndre Jordan is a key part to our championship aspirations as unlikely as they are just like Doc Rivers. Both are potentially capable of being great or at least having great performances albeit in inconsistent fashion, so we continue to hope for that to show up, which personally depresses me to rely on such unreliable figures.

lol dude got drafted in the 2nd round and still became an All-NBA 1st teamer, allstar, olympian, and perennial DPOY contender, and guys still complain he didn't put the work in. This place is becoming cringey with all the whining about everything all the time, you lot don't even seem to enjoy basketball or the process of following a team.

I don't remember the Clippers fandom being this entitled when we were bad, maybe it was just dormant, but since we've been good I see a lot more complaining about everything everywhere, not just here. Makes me feel out of place tbh. Shouts out to everyone still finding ways to enjoy this team.

I didn't realize that Modern Family is still on TV.

QRich does make a good point, DJ has worked hard. It's not like DJ was looking to get in the limelight in his first few seasons in the league. I'm sure he's just taking the opportunity to grow his brand. He won't be playing basketball forever and he could be setting up what he does in the future. As for the present I'm sure that he's focused on our current season.

DJ worked damn hard to go from playing limited minutes as Kaman's backup to being a starter. There's no doubt about that. But if we're being honest, that level of effort has disappeared from him this season, especially since he got named to the All-Star team. He used to play hard every night despite his flaws. Now there are plenty of games where he just doesn't show up. I used to get frustrated at how he'd play against guys like Marc Gasol and Al Horford. Now I'm concerned about how he plays against guys like Frank Kaminsky and JaVale McGee. I don't see how it's unfair to start questioning whether or not there's too many off-court distractions for DJ right now.

You can call it entitlement, but for better or for worse, this team invested a lot of money in DJ under the assumption that he'd be our defensive anchor for years to come. And after a hot start in October and November, our defense this season has been abysmal. DJ is not entirely to blame, but his defensive metrics are all significantly worse than last year and much of it has to do with his own level of play. Pointing this out isn't being "entitled," it's adjusting to the higher expectations that come with being a perennial playoff team and judging players accordingly.

DJ's always had problems to keep concentration for long stretches, it's the main problem with his defense since he came into the league, and a major reason why he fell to the 2nd round. His main defensive weakness has always been to be where he needs to be when teams get into 2nd, 3rd and 4th actions in the same possession.

I just don't get the rationale of blaming it on his off-the-court stuff. Like, do you think in the middle of a pick'n'roll when he's focused on thinking if the guard is gonna pull up or split the screen, he suddenly gets distracted thinking "Oh how nice it was when I went to the Modern Family set" or something? it just doesn't make a lot of sense. It's not like he's missing practices or anything like that, it just seems like reactionary stuff with no correlation at all to his actual work ethic.

Let me ask you this, does posting on RealGM in your free time affect your performance at work?

MartinToVaught wrote:Pointing this out isn't being "entitled," it's adjusting to the higher expectations that come with being a perennial playoff team and judging players accordingly.

You say this every time someone calls you out on your unreasonable standards for other people, but it's just another way of saying you're entitled to enjoying another dude's success. You are the one adjusting your own expectations, no one else is doing it for you. You have no other reason to adjust them other than you decided you deserve more because Sterling is gone or whatever. It's also a dangerous loop to get into, what if they win a title, do you adjust your expectations to winning the title every year, and if not you keep throwing hissy fits?

I'm pretty disappointed in dj's play this season because i had some very high expectations coming off his playoff performances and olympic team role. He looked REALLY good toward the end of last season and he was becoming dominant defensively. I don't see that at all these days, let alone him taking that next step i was expecting. He's had way too many games this season where he's not locked in the way he could be.

That said i don't for one second blame that on any of his extracurricular activities. If anything at all is a factor it'd be his ego getting too big off of the olympic team stuff, which i wouldn't be inclined to think but who knows 100% anything with what motivates any given athlete? I understand that as fans it's better to think "he's making millions, his only job should be to concentrate on basketball," so when we see these guys doing extra things it makes us think they're going off the reservation and not actually putting the work in. But NONE of these guys are robots. They all have things they do for fun in their off time and unless dj starts looking like oliver miller, or showing up to work drunk like ty lawson (i always knew he was exactly who he was), i'd say he's still doing a lot more right than wrong.

Nice tv role for him, no hate from me BUT... can we transfer some of this passion this team has for tv and commercials to the court?

I'm not worried about things that require the players showing up for a couple of hours in their spare time and how that affects their play. This is time other players use for things like clubbing and shopping, or looking for women on Twitter. It's not like the other NBA players are working on their game during the same time. The players agent does the work, the player gets called, they show up for some filming, and that's that. This is the least of my worries, it's really just something to complain about and magnify as if it actually has some impact.

Now if DJ starts trying to write a movie script and that starts taking up all his time and effort and focus, that's a different story than showing up and saying a couple of lines in a TV show or commercial, etc.