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Is Lakers guard D’Angelo Russell an underrated free agent?

Lakers guard D’Angelo Russell free agency preview and why he’s underrated amid a career year from HoopsHype’s NBA Insider Michael Scotto.

Los Angeles Lakers guard D’Angelo Russell is playing the best basketball of his career in his prime, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

This season, Russell has shot more efficiently than his All-Star campaign in Brooklyn, shooting 42.3 percent from 3-point range, which ranks third among players ranked in the NBA’s Top 25 in made threes per game.

Since Russell’s son, Riley, was born on September 24, 2022, Russell has averaged 18.0 points on 46.6 percent shooting from the field and 40.9 percent from 3-point range, 6.3 assists, and 3.0 rebounds with a plus-215 rating in 137 games.

According to Russell, the birth of his son helped him know his purpose in every game.

“Everything I do, I’d see his face,” Russell told HoopsHype. “It’s either this or that. What are you going to do? It makes my decision easy when it comes to anything. It does have a change and effect on you. It puts you in this state of mind that it’s mine or I’ll die for it. It’s been good.”

Russell has an upcoming decision on his $18.69 million player option for the 2024-25 season and is considered one of the top free agents on the market should he decline to exercise his player option and become an unrestricted free agent.

“It’s definitely pressure,” Russell told HoopsHype when asked what it’s like playing in a potential contract season. “It’s something that can eat a lot of people up in the league. A lot of people can be too high at times and too low at times, which causes an emotional roller coaster through the ups and downs of the season. For me, I wanted to control that. I wanted to stay sane and stay even-keeled through the ups and the downs.”

While thriving under the pressure of a contract season, Russell could be of interest to several teams looking for point guard help during free agency this summer.

Global Rating: Who should make the All-NBA Teams?

Just like we did with the All-Star rosters, we’re showing how the All-NBA Teams would look as of today according to Global Rating, an advanced metric that evaluates the performance of every player during the season. The All-NBA Teams will be updated …

The All-NBA Teams will be updated every day considering the rules regarding positions. Each one will have two guards, two forwards and one center. Just for fun, we’re going deeper and coming up with how a 5th, 8th or 10th All-NBA Team would look like.

The biggest All-Star snubs in NBA history

HoopsHype uses its Global Rating metric to determine who were the biggest NBA All-Star snubs of all time.

In the NBA’s rich history, many players with strong cases for All-Star selection have been overlooked. Today, we delve into identifying the most significant All-Star snubs ever.

Using our Global Rating metric, which is fully explained here, we went back through NBA history to look at some of the biggest All-Star omissions ever.

(Note: While All-Star selections are made mid-season and our Global Ratings are end-of-season rankings, we can get a pretty good idea of who the biggest snubs ever are using the metric.)

Global Rating: The best players from each draft class

Every year, the NBA draft is a great opportunity to look at the future of the league. Players get selected from No. 1 to No. 60 with one big question in mind: which ones will end up having the bigger impact on the court? According to Global Rating, …

According to Global Rating, these are the best players this season from each NBA draft class – including those who were eligible that year but ended up undrafted.

(RNK: Overall league ranking).

The peaks and valleys of the Phoenix Suns

The Phoenix Suns were a team that came into this season with high hopes. Acquiring Kevin Durant last year, going all in by acquiring Bradley Beal, and parting ways with Chris Paul and Deandre Ayton, Matt Ishbia hoped to start this new chapter of …

The Phoenix Suns were a team that came into this season with high hopes. Acquiring Kevin Durant last year, going all in by acquiring Bradley Beal, and parting ways with Chris Paul and Deandre Ayton, Matt Ishbia hoped to start this new chapter of Suns basketball with a winning culture.

Well, that has not happened. The Big Three have only managed to play six games together this season. In a minuscule sample size of 108 minutes, the numbers are encouraging. Their offensive rating sits at a healthy 120.7, with a net rating of +8.0.

Overall, as a team, the offensive rating is middling at 116.4, with a net rating of +0.8.

So, what can we really take away from the Suns at this point in the season?

Let’s delve into some factors that show the possibilities of the team and what has contributed to their slow start.

Vikings have incredibly unique defense

Brian Flores has created a true anomaly on defense with the 2023 Minnesota Vikings

The Minnesota Vikings don’t just have a great defense, it’s borderline historic.

Pro Football Focus’ Timo Riske clustered every defense from the past five years to find schematic similarities and differences between the 160 separate variations. He found that the 2023 Vikings’ defense was the furthest away from any other in the study, making it the most unique defense in the past five years.

For a short definition, clustering is a method data scientists usually use to scout how a player was utilized in an offense. They take multiple data points from a player, such as a corner’s pre-snap positioning and how often he’s asked to blitz, and compare it to others to find similarities and differences in their usage. Riske used this method to determine how defensive coordinators utilized different coverages to attack NFL offenses.

Riske found that Minnesota had several aspects of its scheme that made it unique, including its insane usage of both cover-zero and cover-two. The league average for cover-zero and cover-two are 4.0% and 10.3%, respectively. Brian Flores’ Vikings are running these two coverages at a rate of 11.5% and 22.6%. The teams that are closest to them, just in 2023, are three teams that run cover-zero at a rate of 7.1% (New England, New York and Arizona) and the Chicago Bears that run cover-two at a rate of 18.1%.

Flores has fielded a true anomaly on the defensive side of the football. As Cody Alexander has stated, Flores is playing a completely different game from anyone else in the NFL. It has resulted in a lot of confusion from opposing quarterbacks and a top-ten defense from a unit that was firmly at the bottom of the league at the end of last year.

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Can the Clippers keep up their stellar play?

The Clippers have been rolling as of late having won seven straight games and 12 of their last 15 contests. Upon James Harden’s arrival, expectations were unfairly high right off the bat. After starting 0-5 with Harden, many were quick to dump on …

The Clippers have been rolling as of late having won seven straight games and 12 of their last 15 contests.

Upon James Harden’s arrival, expectations were unfairly high right off the bat. After starting 0-5 with Harden, many were quick to dump on the Clippers as a failed experiment. Clippers coach Tyronn Lue was never worried, though.

“We lost six games in a row but I still felt really good about this team,” Lue said after a recent game against the Warriors.

In terms of starting to figure out roles for everyone on the team, Lue talked about how this was exactly how he pictured it would be like when they acquired Harden.

“This is exactly what I envisioned. Just how we should play, how we can play. The biggest thing is PG [Paul George], Kawhi [Leonard], and James making each other better on a night-to-night basis. We understand they’re three future Hall-of-Famers, along with Russ. It’s gonna be a different guy every night, depending on how teams are playing us, what teams are willing to take away.”

Before getting overly excited about the Clippers’ future, there are several key questions that need positive answers, though.

How Jaime Jaquez is excelling as a rookie

HoopsHype breaks down the ways and play types in which Jaime Jaquez is posting a great rookie season in 2023-24.

Before the 2023 NBA draft, the name on everyone’s mind was that of eventual No. 1 pick, Victor Wembanyama. And although he’s been outstanding so far in his first NBA season for the San Antonio Spurs – as has fellow Rookie of the Year candidate Chet Holmgren – another rookie who has been surprisingly great through the quarter mark of 2023-24 is Miami Heat swingman Jaime Jaquez Jr, the No. 18 pick in 2023.

Over his last 19 games, Jaquez is averaging 15.9 points and 3.9 rebounds per game while shooting 52.7 percent from the floor and 45.0 percent from beyond the mark, the latter mark being particularly impressive considering Jaquez got to the NBA with questions surrounding his shooting stroke.

What’s more, Jaquez ranks third league-wide in our Global Rating metric among rookies, trailing just the two aforementioned high draft picks, Wembanyama and Holmgren, so we thought it time to break down the impressive rookie’s game and figure out in what facets of offense he’s been excelling.

Let’s jump right in.

Global Rating: Who should make the All-Star Game?

All-Star voting is a complex matter these days with fans, players and media having a voice to decide one of the greatest honors in basketball. To make the decision easier, we simplified who actually deserves to make it according to Global Rating, an …

The All-Star rosters will be updated daily considering the NBA rules regarding positions. The starting lineups will feature two guards and three frontcourt players (including center), while the reserves will have two guards, three frontcourt players and two extra players regardless of their position on the court.

NBA live stats: The top players of the day, ranked

Every night, we rank the top players of the day from around the Association. Our rankings are based on each player’s Global Rating, which updates in real time as the games are played.