The Los Angeles Lakers have now lost four games in a row after an unsurprising blowout loss to the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday night to drop their record to 2-12. This looks like another lost season for the Lakers and a lot of the talk surrounding them has been about how head coach Byron Scott may be mishandling rookie D'Angelo Russell. Before Tuesday night's game though, it was reported that Scott wants to get Russell more minutes, according to Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News.
The controversy surrounding Russell has been about his lack of playing time in the fourth quarter. The Lakers basically knew coming into this season that this was going to be a re-builiding year yet Scott decided to consistently play 29 year old journeyman Lou Williams over the rookie Russell at the ends of games. Lakers fans wanted to see Russell in fourth quarters so that he can learn what it is like to play in crunch time since they had nothing else to lose but at the beginning of the year Scott was not obliging.
It seemed as though Scott was making progress in that regard as he played Russell 34 minutes and 36 minutes respectively in back-to-back games but on Tuesday night Russell played just 26 minutes including none in the fourth quarter. Scott said he didn't play Russell in the fourth quarter because it was a blowout and there was nothing to be learned for him in this game.
Through 14 games Russell is averaging a little more than 26 minutes per game but Scott said he wants to get it up between 30-35 minutes. While Scott did make that statement he also added that it was up to the 19 year old rookie to earn those minutes.
In Scott's defense here, his job is to win games now and in order to do that he has to put the guys on the floor who he believes give him the best chance to do that. Russell did not play well to start the year so him not playing in the fourth quarter made at least some sense but now Russell has played better and should be getting those minutes. Scott told the media a couple of days ago that Russell is now calling 90 percent of the plays on offense so he clearly has shown some improvement this season and warrants a minutes increase. Scott did say that he wants to give Russell the minutes increase he deserves but until he plays him consistently in the fourth quarter it is hard to believe him.
