Sick and tired of the blind bashing of Luke Walton. This is typical retrospective, the grass is greener on the other side bullshit.

We pulled to within 6, yes. Took our starters balling hard for the whole 3rd to get to that point. Each starter had played ~23-25 minutes at this point, AFTER a B2B where they each played ~40+ minutes each. We’ve had a brutal december with our roster already heavily taxed by attrition. This isn’t a video game with a fucking stamina bar. The players looked absolute knackered out there and Luke was right to take them out at that point.

Don’t forget Lonzo is out. Brook is out. KCP is out. Hart had 5 fouls at that juncture. Bogut is consistently on a minutes restriction. Who else are you going to put on the floor at that time? Some will argue that Luke should have staggered minutes for the starters in the 3rd. And then what? We proceed to fail to close the defecit and then you’d have another horde of fans complaining why he did not play the starters together.

Who is left at that point? Caruso, Clarkson, VDB, Brewer, LNJ and Zubac. Like it or not, we have to make do with our roster at this point.

We need to wake up to the fact that we were never going to be good, and never going to make the playoffs this season. Regardless of the unreasonable hype and unrealistic expectations, this season was going to be about player development and building a team identity.

Do any of you actually realize that we lost about 75% of our backcourt from last season, and a fuckload of our offensive output in Lou, SwaggyP and D’Lo? We essentially restructured our roster in the off-season/draft, and were starting from ground 0.

Focus on progress. Our defense is much improved. We have seen some semblance of a fluid offense in short stretches. BI has improved from last season. As has Randle. We have had a great draft.