In anticipation of tomorrow night’s debut against the Sacramento Kings, Russell Westbrook’s first words as a Los Angeles Clippers player:
“For me what matters is to find ways to help everyone. Making sure I simplify the task for my teammates, discovering their strengths, where they prefer to receive the ball. I think I will be able to help above all by creating easy pitches for everyone. It will be a process that will involve me a lot, but I’m ready for this new challenge and I can’t wait to face it”.
Back to work. pic.twitter.com/11foSwKacx
— LA Clippers (@LAClippers) February 23, 2023
Ty Lue, coach of the Sailing shipshas no intention of distorting the former UCLA.
“We want Russ to stay Russ. We want him to be the player that he is, the MVP, the Hall of Famer, everything that he brings every single night. We’ll just have to make sure everything you stay within the limits of our team and what we are trying to do at a team level…Sometimes our style of play is to ride George and Leonard, put them in a position to take the shots they like. Westbrook will help us find easy baskets, and he will often handle the ball. You don’t produce a triple-double average without having the ball in hand”, continues Luc.
“We know he can make some right plays in that situation. The most important thing will be how we use it away from the ball. It will take a bit ‘of time. When you’re the MVP of the league and a Hall of Famer, it’s not easy to change certain aspects of your game. So we have to help him.
“It’s going to take a while, Russ is used to playing a certain way, a certain style of basketball your entire career, and that’s what makes him Russell Westbrook. So non we absolutely want to distort it. But we have to make sure that it is also useful away from the ball. That it has an impact on the game, on the victories of our team. We will make it”.