The Jazz will be adding at least two players in the coming days. Now that they’ve bought out and waived Russell Westbrook and Leandro Bolmaro, they’re down to 12 players on the 15-man roster. Teams are only permitted to dip below 14 players on standard contracts for up to two weeks at a time.
The Jazz have a multitude of financial options to expand the roster, including the use of $5.5MM of its midlevel exception available to split up and sign players to multiyear contracts, ESPN’s Bobby Marks tweets.
We have more from the Western Conference:
- After his All-Star appearance, the Jazz want to see more growth from Lauri Markkanen, Tony Jones of The Athletic writes. Now that they’ve traded Mike Conley and Malik Beasley, they will put the ball in Markkanen’s hands more often during crunch time, seeing how he makes decisions for himself and others. The coaching staff also wants to see him in more isolations.
- Isaiah Joe‘s perimeter shooting has been a critical factor for the Thunder‘s offense, according to Joe Mussatto of The Oklahoman. The reserve guard has knocked down 45.2% of his 3-point attempts. “Giving a guy like him the freedom to take some tough ones and show the other team that he’ll make some tough ones, it opens things up for the offense and I think we’ve benefited from that,” coach Mark Daigneault said.
- The Clippers are making a foolish mistake by adding Westbrook, who plans to join them once he clears waivers, Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times opines. The issues that Westbrook had with the Lakers — poor shooting, ball hogging, sullenness and selfishness — won’t go away when he joins Los Angeles’ other team, according to Plaschke. Adding him negates the Clippers’ strong trade deadline moves and the fact that their lineup was finally playing together, Plaschke adds.
Westbrook is subtraction by addition.
I honestly don’t see the point of adding Westbrook, especially since the Clippers already added Bones Hyland.
I figured Bones would fill that kind of second unit sparkplug, scoring option off the bench, and they’d let him co-run the second team offense having him paired alongside Gordon in the backcourt, and Powell, Batum, and Plumlee/Covington as the rest of their second unit.
As things stand now, Lue is already going to have to share minutes between the five of Batum, Covington, Zubac, Morris Sr. and Plumlee at the 4 and 5 spots in the lineup.
Adding Westbrook will only create a logjam between Mann, Bones, Gordon, and Westbrook having four men basically fighting for three spots in the rotation.
Now, if Kawhi continues to take games off, then it could allow Lue more opportunities to use all four men by sliding George over to the 3 and freeing up the starting 2 spot, but when everyone is healthy and playing someone isn’t going to be happy with his minutes on a nightly basis.
Since Bones just wanted out of Denver after feeling he never got enough of an opportunity, it doesn’t seem real wise to bring in Westbrook only to cut into Hyland’s minutes.
As of right now Bones is feeling rejuvenated, healthy, and motivated to prove his worth, idk if I would possibly dampen his spirits by cutting his minutes.
Also, Gordon just fits this team perfectly, and regardless whether or not he starts, his combination of skills can be a real asset to the Clippers…
Idk, I guess I just don’t see the fit, and I cannot imagine they’d take away the starting role from Mann either, so the Clippers are only creating their own logjam by bringing in Westbrook.
Now wall to dc?
Westbrick is gonna eat up some good players’s playing time, especially if he’s starting.
Don’t understand why the Flippers would do that.
Didn’t they watch Laker’s game these last years? Dude has the most backboard clanks in the league. Huge stock of bricks.
Maybe Balmer wants these bricks to build the new arena. That must be it!
The lakers have been bad because they are a bad team. Not all westbrook’s fault
Apparently you haven’t seen any games.
Exactly. Westbrooks numbers are literally the same every year. Lakers just didn’t build a good team.
I thought Russ was a better fit in Chicago BC he does go at the ring unlike Lavine & DeRozan…
First the Jazz bereave Markkanen of any legit PG by trading Conley and now they intend to “put the ball in his hands more often during crunch time”. How?
All they’ve got left are a few SG chuckers in Sexton, Horton-Tucker and ballhog Clarkson. These guys have already proven that none of them can get the ball to Markkanen consistently, especially not in crunch time.
Regarding isolations, Markkanen is currently the No. 11 iso player in the league with 1.23 PPP and the best among bigs by a mile. What kind of “growth” are the Jazz expecting there?
Sounds like some FO mumbo jumbo to keep the fans interested for the rest of their tanking season.
You seem upset that a team is tanking after trading away their 2 best players.
Upset? How did you arrive at that low IQ conclusion?
I merely explained that the Jazz’s statements regarding Markkanen don’t make much sense.
Btw., I don’t care about any U.S. sports franchise. U.S. pro leagues in general are meaningless challenger trophy circus events.
The Clips have a lot of players with health issues, and missing games. Russ doesn’t miss a lot of games, and the Clips are shallow at PG.
Plastchke is likely right, I don’t know ball. But the man should probably stick to baseball. His hot takes are more palpable in a world with MadDog Russo
I’m not a Westbrick fan, and it’s a 50/50 signing at best. But Plastchke is just reciting the LAL narrative. RW is certainly high maintenance, but in an of itself, that doesn’t make signing him a mistake. AND, because of Ty Lue, the LAC will never have a team identity that would facilitate them playing together for any sustained period, whether RW is there or not.
I love Muscle Chestbrook.. but he’s not the OKC version… And he’s a turnover machine, hope he doesn’t get inserted to the starting lineup, Mann who’s not a natural PG is doing a fantastic job as of late.. and what’s puzzling too me is that Bones Hyman must not be as good as he thinks of himself or as good as advertised, is gotta be why they picked up the leading triple double machine.. or leading quadruple double machine if turnovers are a qualified stat for that category.. smh.. He wanted to stay in LA however Heat were a better fit for him to lift a team up in the standings