Even in Round 2, Lakers D’Angelo Russell: “Timberwolves held me back”
By Bret Stuter
Nice guys finish last. So do nice teams
The white knight team that rescued D’Angelo Russell this time was none other than the Minnesota Timberwolves. And for the next 3 years, spanning four NBA seasons, the Timberwolves were content to keep Russell on their roster. The Timberwolves were an improving team. But make no mistake, the improvement was not coming from their point guard, but rather from their young star shooting guard, Anthony Edwards.
You might think that would be an ideal situation for any NBA player, particularly after the Timberwolves did not stand pat, but rather took risky roster moves to improve the team. After the Timberwolves traded for Rudy Gobert, the Timberwolves starting five would almost pilot itself, and the only thing that the Timberwolves asked of D’Angelo Russell was to score points and feed the basketball to the open shooter.
The third time was no charm
That did not last, as the Timberwolves lost Karl-Anthony Towns to injury, and had to lean more heavily upon the remaining veterans. That was not what Russell wanted, as he balked at working to integrate Rudy Gobert into the Timberwolves’ offense, and then balked at being the team’s point guard altogether:
Key to DLo's resurgence:
— Jon Krawczynski (@JonKrawczynski) December 10, 2022
"I was trying to be too focused on being a point guard instead of a basketball player. Switching it up so my mentality was that there’s a lot of opportunity out there for me to just be me instead of overthink it and try to point guard the team."
The problem with all of that is that change in D’Angelo Russell’s role made him a higher-paid shooting guard than Anthony Edwards, and Edwards is five times the player that Russell is. The Timberwolves may have been a nice team to acquire DLo, but the kid gloves were off when they joined the string of NBA teams that decided that the team was better off without D’Angelo Russell than with him.