I'm less worried about the rebounding then the effort. In the past Rui would kind of look at the ball and just not move. His Mr Roboto basketball mind was calculating whether to get back on D or stay on offense Now at least he's boxing out. That's a big improvement if you allow your teammate to get the board getting a rebound assist is good enough
Rui and everyone else that did plays tasked with fronting Jokic and getting into him low sure nutted up and took the physical consequences of it for JJ’s game plan.
Rui has really improved defensively this year. He’s also turned himself into a real threat from outside. I, for one, am really glad that he wasn’t traded.
Me too!! Glad to have Dalton back too and just shocked and amazed Rob was able to hang onto AR when negotiating the Luka trade. Props to JJ and staff and Max for his hard work resulting in him being the next most valuable player Niko agreed to take instead.
I don't want this to sound like I am throwing shade at AD, who I absolutely love as a player... this is strictly about Rui, but he plays better overall with Luka than with AD on the floor and he defends better and plays harder too. For whatever reason, I am not getting into that, but I think it's pretty evident. The guy is averaging close to 20/7 lately, and the increase in defensive effort is obvious to anyone who knows something about basketball.
Rui has been great. Looks like someone that works hard and tries to improve, that's a great skill. Kudos to him, will be key for us this year as the X factor
Absolutely, he was a big key in this win and in keeping teams honest going forward. It seems to me he is passing better, seeing open teammates more. Rui and LeBron being strong allow us to give up some height without paying as big a price. Definitely an X factor. Kind of like a McAdoo/AC cyborg. Program him for the task of each game and get out of his way...lol.
He's been great as a cutter and with Luka and Bron, he's going to feast on opportunistic basketball. Strange injury. Hopefully it doesn't return.
when he grabbed at it, i just thought gordon had chicken-winged him, but on the replay it was clear that wasn't it. i know my old a** sometimes gets a muscle cramp roughly in that area for little to no reason, so i wonder if it was like that. i can generally stretch it out, and it's like it never happened. wonder if it was similar. mine aren't that painful, but i'm guessing if my muscles were bigger, it might be? #stayweak
I agree. I love AD and I wish the Lakers didn't have to trade him but offensively, I'm just going to say it, he is limited. Primarily only capable of scoring around the rim since outside of his first season, his jumper hasn't looked too good. Yeah, he cleans up around the rim very well but the offense turns stagnant when LeBron is off the court. If they shut down Reaves, then AD becomes the primary scorer and it hasn't always looked the best for the team. AD is too much of a ballstopper when he has the ball so too much ballwatching that doesn't always end up in a good offense. With Luka around, everyone on the roster gets to eat because Luka is constantly scouting the defense for a play. Luka is another LeBron out there so having 48 minutes of guaranteed LeBron-Luka performance will raise everyone's game automatically. Even though AD is an elite player, the offensive aura Luka brings is unmatched outside of Jokic and LeBron. In the playoffs, good luck to any team having to deal with 48 minutes of this every game for a series.
to be fair, we never built a team nor an offense that really worked to AD's strengths. you finally saw some of the latter early this season, and AD was serving pretty nicely as an offensive focal point. we actually ran cutters (and he hit them) and created space for him to play his midrange face up game instead of trying to put him in the low post or beyond the three point line for all catches. i've said it many times, but our biggest issue was that AD and lebron both wanted to play the 4 on defense and both needed to occupy the high post a lot on offense for things to work optimally. add rui as another guy who was kind of in that position, and he was going to get squeezed. to his credit, he's really worked on three point shot to make it where he wasn't going to be stepping on lebron and AD's toes (literally) on offense, but the defense was going to be a continuing issue, particularly if we really did move AD to pf for heavy minutes. so yeah, that fit was less than ideal for rui and might have gotten worse had AD and many of us gotten our wish for a big. then again, rui would have probably been part of any deal for a big that warranted moving AD out of the center spot.
I’m now feeling very much similar to how I changed up from being completely OK at the start of the year with Max still struggling when he was coming off the bench ….. to trading him if it would bring us back a player that we neede more than what he could give us at his still young age, and then how once he got in the starting lineup and knew he had JJ’s confidence in him and Blew Up both sides of the ball …..now I definitely “didn’t” want him to go out. Rui is still getting better …. look at his D now too and he is BIG enough and Strong enough at a solid 6’8” to do a great job wrestling with the best center in the league …. Jokic. He too is on a great contract!
Rui's massive size really causes teams problems when he's cutting or able to get to the rim in any way. Helps make up for the vertical threat of a center in a lot of ways when the Lakers go small
Rui’s looking great these days not so figuratively speaking. He really is Kawhi lite now back when Kawhi was Kawhi. And his explosiveness or quick twitchiness really pops out there at times. The staff’s doing a great job with him.
