D'Angelo Russell Discussion: Adopting A Professional Attitude

And this:

Is why I think Magic is a moron.

 

Well Magic should probably leave the "All Star" part out. if he truly believed he could be an all star, then he wouldn't have traded him.

Also, we didn't need Russell to be a leader. That's why you got Ingram, and now Lonzo Ball, and maybe an established superstar like PG13.

Russell was never going to be our leader and we all knew that after this past year. BUT he could have been a nice core piece for us going forward that can pass the rock, score and rebound well for his position. Not everybody needs to be an all star for your team to be competitive.

 

No, I don't mind the All-Star part. What I do mind is "not a leader" part.

You didn't like DLO? Your locker-room buddy with folded arms told you many a story about how this 20 years old is "immature", "opinionated", "likes night life" etc?

Fine. You are f***ing 60 years old, you should know better than to bad mouth that said 20 years old, if only due to simple human decency.

My hope is that Magic is a dummy up front and it is Rob that makes the important calls. Otherwise we are all doomed.

 

The bolded.

"But what I needed was a leader. I needed somebody also that can make the other players better and also [somebody] that players want to play with."

Russell didn't need to be that if we were drafting Ball and the Lakers were ready to throw the mantle of leader and franchise savor on him. I could understand the part that players might not want to play with him though. In a vacuum, I would have liked to at least give the Ball/Russell back court experiment a chance first.

 

that's what i don't get

ok, d-lo hasn't stepped up to the plate to lead this team. why does that mean he needs to be immediately dealt? really bums me out we won't see a ball/russell backcourt

 

Well considering how the cap decreased, it might have made that trade more palatable. I would imagine teams looking to rob magic/polinka even more next yr if they knew we were desperate to move contract to sign Pg and/or James together (or whoever the other max guy). So that part I can use to rationalize the hasty trade of Dlo. Also that "twitter like" of a twitter post saying we didn't need ball because we have Dlo already shows Russell was not keen on Ball himself,otherwise he wouldn't have bothered to unliking it a few minutues later (he only realized ramification once it started getting retweeted).

 

not sure why d-lo wouldn't have been big on ball joining the team

ball would have made things a lot easier for d-lo as a spot up shooter. i guess it all goes back to the leadership thing again

 

Thats the tweet i mentioned he like....he obviously knew it was going to come back to him and tried to unlike it a short time later but was to late, he got retweeted and made news right away

 

Ego? He wanted to be his team still, just guessing obvioulsy

 

Social media is a like a virus on modern culture.

 

so basically this was a case of:

d-lo seeing himself as the face of the franchise and felt he was doing enough to prove that he was capable of leading the team

magic and co. sensing that d-lo WASN'T doing enough to prove he was capable he was leading the team and that nothing was going to improve on that front anytime soon

and then of course you have these potential issues surrounding d-lo that we don't know about (guys don't like playing with him, unfavorable image around the league, stuff like that)