ESPN’s Tim Bontemps reported that the Los Angeles Lakers do not view guard D’Angelo Russell as a core member of the team.
“I mean, at the end of the day, if the Lakers are going to be the championship-contending team that people want them to be, you have to have — in theory what they really need to do is turn D’Angelo Russell into a guy who can both hit threes and guard,” Bontemps said. “Austin Reaves is a guy they see clearly as a guy who’s part of their core going forward. D’Angelo Russell is not, which is why he was on this two-year makeshift deal in the first place. It’s why he opted into his contract this summer, because he knew there wasn’t gonna be a big market for his services.”
A report from Bleacher Report’s Chris Haynes a few months ago claimed that the Lakers attempted to trade Russell to the Golden State Warriors for Klay Thompson, but the Warriors weren’t interested in re-acquiring the 28-year-old.
“I was told the Lakers made a pretty compelling offer,” Haynes said regarding the Lakers’ intentions of acquiring the four-time NBA champion. “It was around a three-, four-year mark somewhere along the lines of 20 million per. And they didn’t get their guy.
“And it was gonna take, obviously, a sign-and-trade scenario, so that had nothing to do with LeBron James’ decision to take less. It was gonna take a sign-and-trade to get Klay, and it did not — it just did not happen. I was told that it would have likely involved D’Angelo Russell being a part of a deal to get Klay. And from what I was told, the Warriors weren’t interested in bringing back D’Angelo Russell.”
Russell accepted his player option with the Lakers for the 2024-25 season instead of opting out to test free agency.
The former Ohio State University standout made that decision after a successful 2023-24 regular season as well as an underwhelming stint in the 2024 NBA Playoffs.
One could argue that he was the Lakers’ third best player — behind only LeBron James and Anthony Davis — during the regular season. From a scoring standpoint, he was third on the team in points per game (18.0) while shooting 45.6 percent from the floor and 41.5 percent from 3-point range.
Russell was also one of Los Angeles’ primary playmakers. He dished out 6.3 assists per game, which ranked second on the squad (James averaged a team-high 8.3 assists per contest).
The floor general was particularly effective with the Lakers near the middle of the regular season. For the month of January, he averaged 22.7 points on 48.8 percent shooting from the field coupled with 6.0 assists per game.
But when the 2024 NBA Playoffs rolled around and the Lakers faced off against the Denver Nuggets, Russell saw his production dip drastically compared to the regular season. Both his scoring average and efficiency against the 2023 NBA champions left a lot to be desired, considering he averaged 14.2 points per game and only 38.4 percent of his shots from the field found the bottom of the net.
With Russell not playing at the top of his game, the Lakers lost the best-of-seven series in five games, and the team’s lone win came in Game 4.
Considering that Russell didn’t give the Lakers a scoring punch in the 2024 NBA Playoffs — when the team needed it most — the rationale for why he reportedly isn’t seen as a member of the team’s core moving forward is clear.
