SoCal High School & Prep Report

Sondheimer's Take On Harvard-Westlake's
Russell Lakey--(December 17,1997)

---And SoCalHoops' Take As Well---

Before the season started, we got a ton of letters and e-mails chastising, criticizing, and poking us for focusing on one player or another from Harvard-Westlake in our early season previews. Seemed that everybody had an opinion, and well, you know the saying, everybody's got two things in common, an opinion and an. . . oops. While a lot of the mail was of the type, "how can you say that guy's good" or " my guy is better than that guy you liked", we just ignored it. After all, this is our site, and we're gonna write what we think, even if it is dead wrong. But the letters we got were all uniform in their praise for one player, who was a virtual unknown at the beginning of the season: Russell Lakey.

Eric Sondheimer has written just a glowing review of Russell Lakey. He loves this kid. And frankly, so do we. We'd put up a link to Sondheimer's article which appears in the LA Times, but it will be gone in a couple of days, erased from all accessibility, so we'll help you all out here by giving you the most pertinent details on Lakey, with Kudos to Sondheimer.

There are a couple of threads being run simultaneously in the article on Lakey, first how he's off to the best start of any sophomore in the region, and second on how he's the "Little Guard Who Could". But first on the fast start: In the first six games, Lakey has scored 20 or more points five times, scoring 21 against Antelope Valley, 24 against Moorpark, 20 against Thousand Oaks in the first round of the Thousand Oaks Tournament, 26 points against Oak Park, and 27 points against Grant and Gilbert Arenas in pool play at the T.O. tournament. The only game in which he was more or less shut down for any period of time was when he had Shantay Legans of Dos Pueblos in his face, his back pocket and all over him in the T.O. Tournament Championship game which was won by H-W. Well, he wasn't completely shut out. . . . he scored 11, a good day for some players who aren't nearly as talented or quick as Lakey. In these six games, he's averaging 21.5 points per game.

Not bad for a kid who's only listed in the roster at 5'-11". Sondheimer says he's 5'-10" in the article, but we got our info from Hilliard. . . not that it matters, whether he's one inch shorter or taller. . . he's still a big player.

"I haven't had a player, including the Collins twins, with a start like his," Wolverine Coach Greg Hilliard told Sondheimer. "He's an amazingly quick learner," Hilliard said. "He's already reinvented himself twice. He's got a pull-up jumper and a fadeaway, which he didn't have at all when we started this winter."

And Lakey had to sort of reinvent himself, since he found himself getting packed a lot during the summer league when he finally got the chance to move up from Freshman ball to the Varsity. While Sondheimer says that he dreamed of playing with the Collins twins (what H-W player didn't?) Hilliard had no thoughts of moving the kid up early, because he was just not ready to play against the much stronger and bigger varsity players. During summer league games, he found that when he drove to the basket, he was getting stuffed more often than not. "Sometimes I'd get fouled," Lakey told Sondheimer. "Most of the time I'd get blocked." So he went back to the laboratory, and reinvented his shots, coming up with a nice pull up jumper and the fadeaway. But from what we've seen of him, he's improving his ability to drive to the hole and avoid the larger players by using the baseline more effectively.

He's also a great free throw shooter, hitting 26 of 33 in these first six games. According to Sondheimer, he's not especially quick, but he's got great ball instincts and great skills. And Lakey agrees, telling Sondheimer "So far I've kind of surprised myself at how well I'm doing," he said. "I'm praying I can keep it up the whole season. People look at my size and say, 'He's too small,' but if you go out there and try hard, size doesn't really matter. It's how hard you play, how hard you practice and your skill level."

Victor Munoz also agrees, and told Sondheimer "He's very deceptive. He's not what he appears to be. You go, 'Oh no, he can't play.' Once you play against him, you quickly realize how good he is. When he's coming up the court, he's jerking back and forth and you don't know how to react. Sometimes you're in awe, 'How did he do that?' " Munoz thinks that Lakey might even be the next great sensation "He's capable of being a superstar," Munoz told Sondheimer.

Sondheimer reminds us all that sometimes basketball is not only a game for the vertically gifted, telling us all about that famous alum from his own alma mater, Gail Goodrich who played for Poly High. And even though Sondheimer says that Lakey's "no Goodrich", in our opinion he just might be in a year or two. Or maybe by the end of this season. Who knows how far this little guard can go?

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