The NBA regular season continues, and today the Lakers travel to take on the Grizzlies. In the end, they won 123-120. You must know that the players who played in this game of the Grizzlies can be said to be some marginal players in the league, and many of them are players who cannot be named. But in this game, they caused a lot of problems for the Lakers, and the two sides played until the last second. This is really incomprehensible to many fans.
James and Davis played without any problems on the Lakers' side today, James scored 37 points, 9 rebounds and 5 assists, while Davis scored 36 points, 14 rebounds and 5 assists. The reason why the Lakers didn't win easily today is because their outside projection today was not satisfactory, especially Russell's performance was too sluggish. Russell scored just 4 points on 2-of-9 shooting and 0-of-5 from beyond the three-point line.
Seeing Russell's current performance, many Lakers fans are sweating. Because Russell's performance in the last three games has been very sluggish, playing 3-of-11 from the Warriors and 5-of-19 from the Timberwolves. It looks like Russell will be noticeably uncomfortable when the opposition starts to work the defensive end. The hit rate will drop dramatically. What's more, Russell's defense is very poor, and today he was easily broken by the Grizzlies' Pippen Jr., with almost no defense. So a lot of fans are starting to worry about the state of the Lakers in the playoffs, and if Russell can't open this point, they will have a hard time.
In fact, the Lakers have a good chance of getting Murray from the Hawks in the middle of this season. Murray has been in great form this season. He averaged 22.4 points and 6.5 assists per game, and Murray was also an All-Star and an All-Star caliber player. What's more, Murray is a big-hearted player, the more he plays hard, the more he performs, and his defensive ability is also very strong. Murray is definitely a more well-rounded player than Russell. But the Lakers didn't choose to trade Murray to the Lakers before the trade deadline, and they had a good chance of closing the deal. Maybe the Lakers management will feel a little regretful now.
They ultimately chose to trust Russell, but Russell is full of great instability, and his defense could be a target in the playoffs. His defense will be a burden for the Lakers in the playoffs. The Lakers kept Russell because of his shooting ability, but once Russell was given intensity by defenders, he immediately fell out of place. That could cast a shadow over the Lakers' future playoff runs. If Russell had a bad run in this year's playoffs, we're almost certain that Pelinka would have traded him in the offseason, and probably any management would run out of patience.