Russell Westbrook on Christian Braun’s jersey number chatter: Leave him alone… we never talked about it

Mile High Sports’ Ryan Blackburn asked Booth about his confidence in retaining Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, the team’s stalwart starting shooting guard, in NBA free agency following the draft. Booth’s response seemed to strongly imply that he’s not confident the two-time champion shooting guard will be back (emphasis mine): You mentioned the starting lineup, all those guys together, an expensive starting lineup — we’ve talked about the limitations that the CBA has really created, has that changed your perspective or shaped your perspective on making sure you keep KCP versus different paths that were clearly limited if you lost him? Booth: Yeah, I think you have to look at everything and the nature of free agency is that he’s unrestricted. So we can try to bring him back and if he doesn’t want to come back or chooses to go somewhere else, that’s his prerogative, so we’ll have to work with that. So I think we’re willing to plug and play, so to speak. If you look at some teams that have been good in the past, they had to find a way to replace the fourth, fifth starter, sixth guy off the bench and still keep going. It would be nice to have him come back, we would have a lot of continuity together, but everything I’ve looked at with lineup stuff and everything, Christian Braun is one of the best net rating guys in the league — same as KCP. So I think if he steps into the starting lineup, I would predict we’ll be OK if KCP doesn’t come back.” -via SB Nation / June 27, 2024