Should Los Angeles Lakers have traded D’Angelo Russell, let Julius Randle walk?

Should the Lakers have let Julius Randle walk this summer?

Here’s the situation:

Randle was a restricted free agent this past summer, but the Lakers didn’t make an offer to sign him and instead let him go to the Pelicans on a two-year, $18 million contract.

Let’s look at how Randle has done this season:

• 19.9 PPG on 13.4 FGA, 9.1 RPG, 2.9 APG, 0.6 BPG, .541 FG%

JaVale McGee replaced Randle at Center this year for the Lakers. Here are his stats for the year:

• 11.1 PPG on 8.1 FGA, 6.9 RPG, 0.7 APG, 2.0 BPG, .603 FG%

On the surface, it looks like Randle is having a much better season than JaVale because Julius is basically averaging a 20-point double-double per game. Randle’s counting stats paint the picture of a good, young, and productive player, but there is one HUGE, elephant-in-the-room problem with Randle’s game. He’s awful on defense.

ESPN has Randle ranked as the worst defensive center in the league with -1.50 DRPM and stats.nba.com has him ranked 76th out of 91 qualified centers in DEFRTG.

Randle averages 30 minutes per game and gets ½ a block during that span. New Orleans has a very good defensive PG in Jrue Holiday and another good defensive frontcourt player in Anthony Davis, yet they still rank just 24th in Defensive Rating for the season. A big reason why the Pelicans can’t get it done on defense this year is that Randle can’t protect the paint.

Randle’s clearly too small to play center in the NBA, so I have no problem with the Purple and Gold choosing to go with McGee as their starting 5. JaVale has proven this year that he can anchor a top-10 defense, and Randle can’t.

With that said, the Lakers could have re-signed Randle and let him play power forward.  That would have been an option, but the Lakers had Kuzma penciled in at the starting PF position, so that meant he would have been the backup power forward.

Magic and Pelinka reportedly met with Randle told him that they’d re-sign him, but that he’d probably get around 20-24 MPG, and Randle allegedly wasn’t satisfied with that amount of playing time, so the Lakers let him walk.

Should the Lakers have re-signed Randle as the starting power forward and asked Kuzma to come off the bench?

You can make a convincing argument that Julius should have been signed to a high dollar contract and been given the starting power forward minutes for the Lakers. Julius averages more PPG, RPG, and APG than Kuzma. He’s also, somehow, shooting 3-pointers at a higher percentage than Kyle. Although he’s an awful defensive center, Randle is a good defensive power forward, better than Kuz in fact.

I like Julius Randle and I was sad to see him go, but I don’t think he should start over Kyle Kuzma, because even though he has slightly better numbers than Kuz, he’s not better than him. Also, as I described above, he should never see minutes at the center position because of his shoddy rim protection.

Randle shouldn’t have been signed as a starter, but Magic and Pelinka made a mistake in not trying harder to convince Randle to re-sign and be their 6th man. He signed with New Orleans as their first big off the bench, so why wouldn’t he have come back to the Lakers as Kuzma’s backup?

It’s obvious that because Magic and Pelinka didn’t draft Randle they didn’t feel a connection toward him and in the end “Maginka” didn’t want him to stay with the Purple and Gold. Instead, they foolishly gave Rondo a one-year deal for $9 million and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope a one-year, $12 million deal.

Rondo and KCP have been about as bad defensively as two players can be, and as each game passes without Lonzo in the lineup, it becomes clearer and clearer that neither player is bringing much value to the Lakers.

The Lakers front office made a big mistake in spending over $20 million combined on Rondo and KCP, instead of signing Julius Randle.