Julius Randle: Why so much hate?

[XXBKXX]

If for some reason we were really looking to spend the money next summer... I'd much rather look at spending it on KCP than Julius... or offering KCP another balloon one year deal to preserve space for the following years FA class. (Zach Lavine could be a good back court running mate with Zo -- and is a 2019 FA)

The more I look at KCP though, he just fits so perfectly with Zo in the backcourt. He can lock up the opposing teams best guard. He is quick and can hit threes. I really like the fit and if we HAD to spend the money for some reason. Much rather it be on KCP than Julius.. We have a logjam at 4.. now moreso with Kuz chomping at the bit...



BK
-------------------
Lakers / Angels / Dolphins

[KobeBryant24]

Apparently he got dunked on by some drew league player smh

[jay51024]

Watch on YouTube

[Mirjalovic]

Apparently he got dunked on by some drew league player smh

and block them 5 times.

[KobeBryant24]

Apparently he got dunked on by some drew league player smh

and block them 5 times.

Lol doesnt mean anything considering the competition

[Mirjalovic]

Apparently he got dunked on by some drew league player smh

and block them 5 times.

Lol doesnt mean anything considering the competition

doesnt mean anything too if he got dunked on considering the competition. i mean **** happen right ?

[Adrian99OVR]

Apparently he got dunked on by some drew league player smh

Everyone gets dunked on. Everyone.

Besides, that dunk wasn't much to write home about. If the person contesting was "Julius Randolph, guy who plays for the local community college basketball team", it wouldn't even make the highlight.

But since it's Julius Randle, NBA player...

[Spanish_Laker]

Watch on YouTube

Our guy blew 2-3 dunks, got dunked by a white team's player 2-3 times... smh.

We could sign that red-hair PG though, he is NBA ready

[Crooked-I]

Julius needs to quit working on his iso game and focus on his spot up shooting, passing, and defense. That's what we need out of him. One legged Dirk fadeaways from a post up is not a shot I'd ever want him taking lol.

He definitely looks slimmer, faster, and stronger tho. His body is closer to Draymonds now, now we just need him to match the skills.

[BeanBurrito]

Julius looks good tbh. He missed a couple dunks, so what. He was trying extra hard to dunk on that dude after he got him.

Just seeing him out there playing like that says a lot about how far he has come from that injury ~2 years ago. Not sure we would have seen him there even last offseason.

These guys titles are so click-baity though. "HUMBLED", cmon...

[BeanBurrito]

Read on Twitter

[Ball so hard]

Watch on YouTube

Our guy blew 2-3 dunks, got dunked by a white team's player 2-3 times... smh.

We could sign that red-hair PG though, he is NBA ready

I thought he looked good out there on offense despite the dunks that he blew.

A quick observations that still hold true:
--Randle really doesn't care much about playing defense. I think this is unlikely to change during the regular season.
--He's a poor to average finisher for someone his size. I suspect that he has small hands. I almost never see him dunk with one hand. He also favors left approximately 90 percent of the time when he drives to the paint; this in and of itself is not a big issue so long as he finishes.
--Randle offers zero rim protection. We can forget about playing him at center as that would be a terrible idea.

Due to his poor defense, Randle needs to be paired next to a defensive stud... Similar to a DeAndre Jordan and to a lesser extent Capela. I'm very concerned abut his fit next to Lopez as both players are piss poor on defense. I'm not sure if we have a good fit next to Lopez; the closest thing would be Nance.

[BeanBurrito]

It's important to remember that Randle as an unselfish player, at times last season, let it be known how he didn't like the way D'angelo would play. In interviews he would say how he would say how they need to play a certain way and not have guys trying to do too much. It was there in between-the-lines in postgame interviews, etc.

Anyways, I love listening to Randle. An actual man for only being 22, great maturity. And when he says he is going to work hard, it is someone you can believe it from, regardless of the results. He was on Lakers Talk for an interview and you can tell he has been hearing some of the negativity about him tbh. Good listen.

http://www.espn.com/espnradio/losangeles/play?id=20149828

0:45- talks about offseason and body
2:00- drew league and fitness
2:45- summer league and Lonzo
4:40- trade rumors about him
5:20- how he sees playing with Lopez
6:48- D'Lo being traded
8:00- about the players traded to the West. Conf.
9:20- diet plan
10:40- upcoming season expectations

(indexed it out of love for you, Laker fam. Rep well out there.)

[gts1]

Randle named Drew League player of the week link to article...

http://www.nba.com/lakers/news/170724-julius-randle-drew-league?cid=fb

[stan francisco]

Watch on YouTube

Our guy blew 2-3 dunks, got dunked by a white team's player 2-3 times... smh.

We could sign that red-hair PG though, he is NBA ready

I thought he looked good out there on offense despite the dunks that he blew.

A quick observations that still hold true:
--Randle really doesn't care much about playing defense. I think this is unlikely to change during the regular season.
--He's a poor to average finisher for someone his size. I suspect that he has small hands. I almost never see him dunk with one hand. He also favors left approximately 90 percent of the time when he drives to the paint; this in and of itself is not a big issue so long as he finishes.
--Randle offers zero rim protection. We can forget about playing him at center as that would be a terrible idea.

Due to his poor defense, Randle needs to be paired next to a defensive stud... Similar to a DeAndre Jordan and to a lesser extent Capela. I'm very concerned abut his fit next to Lopez as both players are piss poor on defense. I'm not sure if we have a good fit next to Lopez; the closest thing would be Nance.

Good post. Kuzma, I guess? The question is how soon. Although he isn't strong enough yet to guard NBA fours in the post, he's a good one on one perimeter to midrange defender against face-up shooters.

[aaron_gray]

Westbrook has said nothing about joining the Lakers... LeBron has also said nothing about joining the Lakers... The only player that's said anything about the Lakers is Paul George...
Do we really thing Magic's smile is going to make a star with limited Prime left like LeBron, pass up signing with a contender? Or a guy like Westbrook either?

I agree that it's inherently foolish to assume that max level FAs would have interest in the Lakers because of history/location or whatever. So let's move forward and let's let the initial assumption be a version of Randle vs additional cap flexibility rather than Randle vs George, Lebron or whoever.

We have Ball and Ingram to be our two main core pieces... Like the warriors have Curry and KD, or Clev has Irving and Lebron... The rest of the core doesn't have to be on that same tier...
You have to have a couple guys in your 'core' that are really good but not necessarily 'great'... Randle has the potential to be that at least.
And let's also be honest that we're not going to be able to keep this team together unless ALL of these guys agree to take a little less than open market value... Maybe Randle's the first to be in that position, but still... They're all going to get paid at some point. You can't be so terrified of paying guys or limiting capspace you have nothing to spend it on right now, that you let a 'really Good' player go for nothing, because you don't think he'll be 'Great.'

Are you saying Randle can be as good as Love, Draymond and Klay, all of whom have made multiple All-NBA teams? Love was also considered to be a franchise player in Minnesota. Since I think it's fair to say that Julius isn't quite at any of their levels just yet, what are the odds you think that Randle will become one of the 15-best players in the league someday? 10%? 5%?

Earlier, you posted a link from B/R about where Randle was compared with other PFs, using it to justify that at a young age, Randle had demonstrated strong potential by ranking as a top 15 PF or something along those lines. Rather than look at where Randle is relative to others at his somewhat thin position (which you may define as a pure power forward that doesn't have the speed to play wing nor the defensive prowess to play C), let's revisit what we define as the type of "good" that can be a 2nd-3rd option on a contending team. Courtesy of 538:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/do-the-celtics-have-enough-star-power-to-win-a-title-not-yet/
This makes for a fairly intuitive list. LeBron, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and Kawhi Leonard are the league’s six Alphas. Chris Paul falls just short of the Alpha category; instead, he joins players such as Hayward, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Rudy Gobert and Anthony Davis on the Beta list. Gammas include players like Isaiah Thomas, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love, John Wall, DeAndre Jordan and Paul Millsap.

More so than intuitive, I think this list is sobering. Many of us would consider guys in that third tier like Wall, Lillard and PG13 to be franchise players in their own right rather than a lowly 3rd sidekick needed to win a ring. I would go even further and remove Oladipo, McCollum, Whiteside and Otto from that list.

Right now, the Lakers have no players in any of the three categories. Ingram probably has the best shot to reach that third tier of players in either his 3rd or 4th season. Zo I'm a bit more skeptical of, just because he hasn't demonstrated the level of scoring ability that you need to be able to consistently create for others in the half court, though that could change if his college 3 pt% ends up translating to the NBA. He does has great vision, passing touch and size and probably has the 2nd highest odds of reaching that third tier at some point in his career.

This is about Randle’s potential though. What are the odds that he becomes as good as Damian Lillard was last season?

You could make the argument that because of the current uncertainty surrounding the Laker’s “core”, we need to retain young talent at whatever price it takes in the hopes that one of them makes a leap. Hell, this team probably isn’t making the playoffs until Ingram’s 3rd season at the earliest;Randle’s got more of a chance to take the next step than Nance, Zubac or Clarkson, so if we’re keeping those guys why not just give Randle 16 mil per and call it a day?

Good players, regardless of position, are getting paid stupid money in the new NBA... Players better than Randle that would make good partners with Ingram and Ball are going to be expensive. Not only that, they're all going to be looking to join a contender. So we're going to end up signing guys like KCP with our Cap Space too until we start winning... And that's probably not going to happen if we use maybe our or 4th best player to dump Deng for capspace.

It may be tempting to conclude from the evidence that plenty of FOs have had their faith rewarded in the past for placing it on a young player that put up good numbers while still on his rookie deal. That line of thinking is exactly how promising teams that at first seem loaded with potential end up becoming capped out 35 win teams – especially when you play in the West. A lot of teams are kicking themselves for giving the “stupid money” you mentioned to young players that have showed a lot more promise than Randle. I’ve made lists of players to illustrate points like this before but people seem to just ignore them so I’ll just leave my point there. Feel free to look on Basketball-Reference though for a nice, lengthy list that include wings that have shot 40% from deep or averaged 17 ppg, big men that have averaged double doubles and a whole bounty of others that have now become liabilities.

Randle is too good a player to dump for cap space a year before anyone gives a commitment. He's the kind of player that will be easy to move at the last minute if needed... Our focus should be on moving Clarkson

I’ll make another post about what rebuilding teams can do with 15-18 mil per year later. For now, I hope this has made fans that want to give Randle anywhere near 20 mil per stop and think; what’s a player who might never become the 3rd best player on a contender really worth? At the end of the day we’re all fans of Randle, only some of us want to move on if he can’t be extended for 4/40. Those of us that might want to swap him for something else before RFA just don't like his All-NBA chances very much.

Spoiler:

Lou was horribly inconsistent for stretches in the season... That's pretty much been his career in fact...
As was Russell and Young... Randle had much fewer games where you wondered where the hell he went. And the narrative on this board and in the media was becoming "As Randle goes, so does the team." When Randle had a good game we tended to win whereas other players could have good games and we wouldn't... That's why several other posters (not just me or Mirja) on this thread were saying Randle was the MVP... Russell came on strong after the Lou trade and maybe made a case in the back stretch, but before then, Randle was arguably our most important player to our success...

I mean, when Lou's shot was off, you knew he was still getting to the line a gajillion times. Randle's X Factor-ness may just mean that he's the least consistent on the team; other players bring it on a regular basis and Randle becomes the guy that pushes things over the top and into the W Column.

[Kilroy]

Move... On... To... Who?

What does "Good enough to be 3rd best player on a contender" mean exactly? Who's the 3rd best player on the Warriors?
Are we talking about a guy like Love, who could clearly get a lot more on the open market if he didn't care about being on a contender?

On a contender, you're generally hoping you find a guy that's ready to sacrifice a lot of money to be the 3rd best player on a contending team. That means they're actually worth a hell of a lot more than Randle, but you luck out and get them on the super cheap... In fact, for contenders, your top 3 or even 4 players are all willing to do that...

And if we were a contender, that's what we'd ask of Randle anyway...

And he wouldn't be our 3rd best player, he'd be our 4th... Ball would be our 3rd... Is Randle going to be good enough to be the 4th best player on a contender? I'd say he is.

But the reality is, there are very few scenarios that could play out that would result in us being a true contender during Randle's next contract in the GSW era. We're going to need a lot of help from a player like Lebron wanting to come here and organize a group of guys to play with him and take less to do it. That's rare. You're also going to need to convince Ingram and Ball to take less to stay part of the future... which is going to be super difficult too... Or you're going to need to trade Ingram to make space for someone else.

Magic's talking about Ingram averaging 20pts next season. how does that fit with 2 max FA's? For example...

[Ballerhogger]

A lot of games he's so damn inconsistent and lazy . Last year he had few good games , a couple triple doubles. His inconsistency is what drives me crazy. One game he does good , one game he walking up the court.

[AcecardZ]

The best of the best don't wait for a contract year to lose weight and get into the best shape of their lives.

[Beethoven]

I think hate is a strong word.
More like uninterestedness.