Russ will have to get some Icy Hot or something because if he continues to play the way he has been playing, his minutes will go down.
The Lakers had a few trades on the table for him but decided to stand pat and hope that a healthy LeBron and Anthony Davis would be enough to make a title run even if Russ isn’t playing at an all-star level. Lakers fans have debated if that was the right move, but now that the trade deadline has passed, it doesn’t matter if you think it is right or wrong. This is what the team will have to deal with going forward.
Here is what Russ had to say about his bad back.
“It comes and goes,” Westbrook said of his back injury. “I’m not accustomed to sitting down for long stretches and getting up and then, like, moving quickly. It kind of stiffens up a little bit.”
“You never know when you’re coming in, you never know when you’re coming out,” Westbrook said. “You never know when you’re playing, you never know … a bunch of things. And I’m speaking for me personally, so it’s a difficult process to be able to figure out and create some rhythm and some consistency where we can actually see what we’re able to do as a team, but those decisions are made by [Vogel] and his coaching staff, and you’ve got to live with it and move on.”
Frank Vogel is on the hot seat, but it appears he will survive the season.
Nothing that happens in the regular season really matters. What happens in the postseason will decide many futures in the Lakers organization going forward, including Westbrook’s future.
Flip the pages for Russell, throwing Vogel under the bus and blaming him for his back injury. Do you think Russ will get better or worse as we get closer to playoffs?
