He basically said, hey, we talked to Russ about starting all the way to getting DNPs and he and Lue agreed. He dropped the bomb on Ty saying it’s on him to put the 5 best players on the court to win. He was like, I gave Ty Lue all the pieces he needs and the PG he wanted. It’s all on him to make it work.

HAHA! Ride or die Lue… As long as Kawhi doesn’t get hurt, anything less than a championship I see Ty Lue get fired at the end of the season.

For his party, Russ sounds all the right notes.

You can almost hear the internal debate and discussions betweenTy Lue and Lawrence Frank if you read their comments side by side. Lue thinks Russ will have the rock in his hands; he’ll have a big role (not a diminished one), and he’s coy about whether Russ will start. Frank is emphasizing that T-Mann should not get short changed and he trusts Ty Lue to get the balance right.

Both are acknowledging that Bones isn’t going to play very much. The way Ty Lue talks, he thinks he won the internal debate and he’s going to play Russ and the rest of the roster based on his own vibes. Frank seems to have set T-Mann as the demarcation point or boundary. Ty can do what he wants so long as he doesn’t diminish T-Mann. Frank probably thinks that Morris’ time has to be diminished and Frank kept emphasizing Westbrook’s rebounding ability over taller players (hint: bench Morris. Play T-Mann and Russ together in the first unit if you have to).

Not sure if Ty sees it that way. With only 21 games left in the regular season and Lue committed to more experimentation, we all just better hope that PG steps things up.

That being said, yea, I think we had a better chance w/o Russ. But let’s not pretend like we were the KD-Curry Warriors or something.