Lakers: D’Angelo Russell Over Jahlil Okafor Was the Right Choice

It’s past time realize that the Lakers made the right choice in selecting D’Angelo Russell over Jahlil Okafor

The Los Angeles Lakers suffered through an abysmal 2014-15 season, but were ultimately rewarded with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2015 NBA Draft. With a draft class laden with potential stars, that seemed like a blessing. The Lakers used the second-overall pick to grab one of those players in 19-year-old Ohio State Buckeyes point guard D’Angelo Russell.

Despite having everyone who supports the purple and gold in his corner on draft night and throughout the rest of the offseason and preseason, the narrative has turned as the tiresome Lakers season has worn on. Now, there are numerous fans popping up saying that the Lakers botched the Russell pick and instead should have taken current Philadelphia 76ers rookie Jahlil Okafor, who went one pick after Russell.

Quite frankly, that’s an entirely and wholly incorrect assessment of the situation.

Sure, if you look at base stats alone, then Okafor is having a better season than Russell through their first 35-or-so games at the professional level. Where the Lakers rookie is averaging 11.7 points, 3.4 assists, 4.1 rebounds, and 1.2 steals per game on 39.7 percent shooting, the Sixers young big man is putting up 17.1 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 1.2 blocks per game while shooting 45.8 percent from the floor. There’s no denying that those numbers for Okafor are better.

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However, there’s also no way around the fact that that doesn’t tell the whole story. For one, the advanced stats of Okafor vs. Russell paint a more favorable picture for Russell. Okafor’s offensive rating with the Sixers this season is a meager 88.1 while also posting a paltry 107.4 defensive rating. Granted, Russell’s defensive rating is actually worse at 109, but his offensive rating is substantially better at 96, per NBA.com. Yes, those measures have to be taken with a grain of salt as the team around the players is a factor. But the team around each rookie is actually another part of comparing the two.

One of the major reasons why the Russell pick was praised is that it addressed a more pressing need for the Lakers. Sure, they already had Jordan Clarkson and the jury is still out on if he and Russell can share a backcourt together. Even still, the last thing that the Lakers needed to add was a defensively inefficient and offensive-minded big man to slot in next to Julius Randle, a power forward that shares the same traits.

The best idea that we can get of how disastrous a frontcourt of Okafor and Randle would be is to look at how Okafor has performed when sharing the floor in Philly with Nerlens Noel—and that’s not pretty. Despite the fact that Noel is regarded as a notably better defender than Randle, Sixers lineups featuring a Okafor-Noel frontcourt have a net rating of -25.9. For reference, even in the dumpster fire that is the 76ers, that’s the 19^th ranked net rating of their 20 most frequently used two-man combinations, per Basketball Reference. If that’s how bad Okafor is with a competent defensive power forward, pairing him with Randle would be total carnage in the worst way.

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Even more than the stats, though, Lakers fans have to stop operating under the assumption that Russell is supposed to be an All-Star caliber player right out of the gate. That was never the case, even when he was given a top-three valuation by scouts heading into the draft. Much of the 19-year-old’s value hinges on the fact that, at such a young age, he already has discernable NBA skills and an exceptionally high ceiling as he continues to grow. The part to take to heart there is that he still has to grow to reach his ceiling. Even Kobe Bryant didn’t come out of the womb averaging 25 points per game.

Speaking of Kobe, the idea of even comparing Russell and Okafor at this point on their current teams in their current state is completely asinine as a whole. The Sixers are still trusting the process, which in layman’s terms means that they are a carefully constructed disaster of an NBA team, and even someone like Okafor can’t survive that. Similarly, Russell has fallen victim to the erratic and nonsensical coaching of Byron Scott more than once this season and is also a part of a roster not even remotely set up for success.

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If you’re going to try and stack these players up against one another, though, and try to argue that Okafor should have been the Lakers’ No. 2 overall pick, think again. Russell was and still is the right pick for the Lakers organization moving forward—maybe give him more than 34 career games to start making those kinds of assessments.