Nate's a heck of a coach, no doubt, but as Clyde notes, Julius has seen double and triple teams all season, nothing new under the sun. He's had nine quarters of Nate's coverage now. Time to show...unless you really believe Gallo* is some kind of Rick Mahorn reincarnated. D ramps up in the playoffs always. So do stars. Let's see if Julius is one.
** maybe Gallo is lol, 1 v 1, Randle couldn't take him...damn
*** so far, only All-Star on the court is...Trae Young, gotta change.
Fair point, but we also know he did have periods of struggle.
In general...
RJ's performance I can accept far more than Randle. He's a very inexperienced and young player despite his maturity.
I think he's trying to make up for Randle. The whole damn team is and only Rose is reliable on a consistent level.
Randle's our by far leading player, an All-Star who averaged a 24 ppg, had MVP chants hurled at him and was a dominant force.
BUT..
This was an unusual season and he had an ATROCIOUS performance the season before where I sure was ready to move on, and I think he's a really cool dude and is talented.
This was always the perils of relying on someone like that who was such a late bloomer in a weird season.
Who are the big late bloomers you can think of?
Nash
Billups
Oladipo
Oladipo is one who did fall off but he had a knee injury.
Randle is a very different personality than Nash and Billups.
HE actually does remind me more of a far more talented Charles Smith, who was a scorer on the Clippers, but they were a BAD team.
There were long stretches this season Randle looked like a Lebron-lite without the hops.
The team relied on him MANY games.
Now they seem to have lost their trust. I don't blame them.
It's gotta be confusing and frusrating.
On a few stretches this season did he struggle.
RJ was awful earlier in the year and some like Macri wanted him possibly gone or lost faith.
Randle? WE NEED THIS MFer
