Richard Jefferson, a former Nets star and announcer for the Brooklyn team, is questioning how well Russell Westbrook fits with the Lakers.
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Jefferson was recently a guest on the No Chill Podcast with Gilbert Arenas recently. The full episode is yet to be released by Fubo Sports, but they’ve released a small, interesting segment.
This segment involves a discussion between the two former Arizona Wildcats, where both of them point out who the X-Factors for the Brooklyn Nets and the LA Lakers will be in next year’s playoffs.
Gilbert Arenas said his piece about Harden and his playoff disappointments. So as the resident Nets expert and supporter, it fell to RJ to try and pick at some Lakers flaws.
Richard Jefferson explains how Russell Westbrook and his shooting can be the Lakers’ X-Factor
While Gilbert harped about James Harden and his past playoff disappointments, Jefferson took it upon himself to point out a few flaws in Russell Westbrook’s mentality while dealing with open 3-pointers:
“We saw the way the Lakers guarded the Houston Rockets in the bubble. They just double-teamed James every time and made him pass it to Westbrook, they didn’t leave the corner with Eric Gordon.”
“Now imagine Bron is at the top of the key, they throw the double-team at him and Bron passes to Russ open in the corner for 3. Now if Russ goes 2 for 9, they’re gonna lose that game. If Russ goes 2 for 5 and the rest of them he’s driving, under control, then they win that game.”
“Russ, we should’ve been playing y’all in 2016. We should not have been playing the Golden State Warriors. They were banged up. I was like ‘Dawg, y’all let that s**t go.’ We 100% thought that you guys were the better team, you had a 3-1 lead. You had to beat them 1 time.”
“It wasn’t all Russ’s fault, I’m not blaming it all on Russ. There were just too many times where it was turnovers or mistakes. You’re like ‘Dude, you’re too great to let this slip through your fingers!”