Lakers need to put Russell Westbrook in Javonte Green role
By Jack Simone
Lakers need to put Russell Westbrook in Javonte Green role: Cutting
Russell Westbrook shoots 43.3 percent from the field this season. Javonte Green? 54.4 percent. As much as it is taking looks in the right areas, it’s also about how the player gets to those spots in the first place.
For Westbrook, it’s a lot of isolation drives and pick-n-rolls. But for Green, he ends up scoring almost exclusively off perfectly timed cuts where his teammates are able to find him for an easy dunk.
Teams leave Green on the three-point line because they’re not afraid to let him shoot. But instead of standing idly by, he puts himself in a position where teammates can find him running to the rim.
No team in the league is going to smother Westbrook on the three-point line at this point. If he can put this same style of play to use, he would almost certainly find great success.
As great of an athlete as Green is, Westbrook is just as elite, and maybe even more so. For years, the NBA has thrown highlight after highlight in our faces of Westbrook dunking on people.
And while most of those highlights were him driving with the ball in his hands, who’s to say that he can’t adjust to creating those highlights while cutting off the ball.
Plus, Westbrook has one of the greatest passers of all time at his disposal to find him on those cuts – LeBron James. Just take the ball out of Westbrook’s hands and let him find lanes.
But obviously, there’s more to Westbrook’s game than there is to Green’s. So how can the Lakers make use of that, too? Well, the solution is simple…