Lakers fans are currently enduring one of the toughest years in the team's storied franchise, but coach Byron Scott is happy with his current rotation.
Scott was heavily criticized for benching this year's second overall pick D'Angelo Russell and last year's first-round pick Julius Randle, but maintains those two players are better suited as reserves right now.
“I like the way we’re playing from both units,” Scott said via insidesocal.com . “I’m going to stick with where it is right now.”
Which means, Kobe Bryant, Lou Williams, Jordan Clarkson, Larry Nance Jr. and Roy Hibbert will start for the foreseeable future. It's hard to argue with the decision to keep Williams in the starting five — he replaced Russell — because Williams, last year's Sixth Man of the Year, scored a career-high 44 points in Los Angeles' last game.
But the more controversial move was replacing Randle with the little-known Nance.
“Larry is playing so well and Julius right now is struggling,” Scott said. “I want to get Julius where I get him more minutes to get him out of this rut so he can be the Julius I know he can be. But Larry is doing so well, it’s hard to make that change at that particular time.”
Despite the change, Randle is still averaging 10.6 points and 9.5 rebounds per game. Nance is averaging 6.0 points and 4.9 rebounds per game.
Scott, like many NBA coaches, likes to stick to the classic 1,2,3,4,5 lineup, but the real dud on this team is Hibbert. The 7-2 center is only averaging 6.8 points per game, and has more zero-point efforts (two) than double-digit efforts (one) over his last 13 games.
So the real question remains: Why didn't this team draft Jahlil Okafor?