MrDollarBills wrote:2k15 wrote:MrDollarBills wrote:
There were people on here saying that Russell was worse than Sean Kilpatrick.
We had people on here saying that Russell should come off of the bench.
We had people saying that Russell will be out of the league in 3 seasons.
All of that had to do with insecurity regarding Jeremy Lin's role with the team following the acquisition of Russell.
Why do you dwell on these negative things instead of focusing on the positive? DLo is a mixed bag coming out of LA, even the Lakers fan base was polarized on him. Magic made the call to move from him so you know how he feels about him.
I've never said anything because I wanted to see how he does in a new environment. And I am super impressed with how he has played but let's not play this game where it was so black and white in the off-season.
Let's focus on the Progress.
People were dogging this kid out before he even stepped foot inside of the Nets practice facility. they will be rightfully called to the mat, especially the lunatics who choose to say outrageous things like "he'll be out of the league in 3 years".
Ehh...I think it's reasonable for people to think he wouldn't do that well.
The reputation that he had wasn't good. And his demeanor on the court was nothing to praise. Tons of players talk about changing and maturing when they go to a new place but few actually mean it.
There were some signs of progress in the months before the trade but there was no clear cut indication that he'd continue on a great upward trend.
Let's think about this logically, if it was so obvious that Russell was going to be good, there would have been universal condemnation from the Laker fanbase as well as dissension in the Laker brass about the decision to trade him. However, there wasn't. I'd say there was 70:30 (or at best, 60:40) split for LA fans and even league wide opinion favoring the idea that they would be better off without him. Remember all of the hot takes immediately after the trade and both NBA legends and vets were still associating Russell with the Nick Young fiasco? Let's not act like what Russell becoming good was a foregone conclusion.
On a comparable note, I think the overwhelming majority of us supported the Pierce/KG trade or even the JJ deal even after the full details were disclosed. It wasn't until we saw them play that things we didn't expect to become negatives became painfully obvious even though an extremely small minority of people had questions from the start.
It's very easy to live in the present and just assess everything on what's happening now. We forget how things were perceived in the past and that things that seemed obvious or crystal clear now weren't so in the past.
If we embrace an "I told you so" mentality about everything, discourse will quickly devolve into a bland statements and generic commentary for fear that a strong stand one takes could lead to eating crow in the future. The mods don't want people to be afraid of making bold claims and projections out of fear of reprisals or future condemnation. It takes the fun of out the community and makes everything way more serious than it needs to be.
It's rare that someone will have an opinion on something that is completely baseless/unfounded. Those who had or still have concerns about Russell had much legitimate information, observations, and opinions from people more in the know than we are to believe that he wouldn't succeed. There's no need to treat this like we're on a witch hunt and repeat ad infinitum the heretofore wrong opinions about the Nets franchise or players.
Part of the reason why our OG posters like VC4P, JG, Speedy, Jeff and others are so beloved is because they had strong beliefs about players that were based on logical, well thought-out reasonings; some of them were right and they got due praise for their predictions and analysis, but many times they were wrong and they own up and still laugh about it today. (VC, how's Jordan Hamilton doing?)
This is a online forum. We follow one of the historically underwhelming teams in the league. No one is getting paid to spend the many hours we do writing our posts. While we welcome well-informed strong convictions, we don't want this to be a place where right predictions are the only accepted thoughts and righteous indignation is wrought against anyone who made a prediction or had reservations that ended up being wrong. If we held every poster to that standard, I could pull up stuff that present day prominent posters have erred in claiming over the years but they themselves have glossed over with the passage of time since it's more desirable to appear like we're always right than to admit everyone gets stuff wrong and it's ok that that happens.
In short, it's not that serious.
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