D’Angelo Russell has talent, but he can’t be this naïve.
The reason people question his leadership is because he snitched on Swaggy P’s cheating and other immature actions by him.
Maybe Magic Johnson could have been nicer about his assessment, but he wasn’t lying.
Magic Johnson on D’Angelo Russell: "We want to thank him for what he did for us. But what I needed was a leader.” Full quote: pic.twitter.com/3FhPthOpN1
— Baxter Holmes (@Baxter) June 23, 2017
Russell was miffed by the comment. Here is what he had to say via SB Nation.
“I didn’t know what the reason behind it was,” Russell said on the July 26 edition of The Woj Pod with ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. “I’m off your hands. I have nothing to do with you. I’m on a new team. I don’t understand the comments, I still don’t.”
He also seems to take a parting shot at Lakers.
“I think in LA, it’s not like college,” Russell said. “The way that Brooklyn runs things seems more college-y. You have a schedule laid out every day, every time, and you know what it is.
“I think that, especially when you’re a young player and you’ve got this structure, you definitely thrive in that because it’s what you come from. You come from high school with structure, you come from college with structure. Then you get to the NBA and you got no structure, so it’s different. But then when you come into a structured situation, that’s different too. So, we’ll see.”
Russell is getting a fresh start in Brooklyn, we will see how he responds to it.