Lakers News: The Real Reason Darvin Ham Is Starting D’Angelo Russell This Year

D'Angelo Russell will not be your Los Angeles Lakers' starting point guard come April 2024.

The Lakers know it, and he knows it. That's why he agreed to a two-year, $36 million deal to stick around Tinseltown. It's more than he would have fetched elsewhere on the open market, but a totally fair number if you weren't paying much attention to his dismal postseason run in 2023, and are focused only on the macro (his regular season numbers, relative youth and that lone All-Star appearance many teams ago).

The 2023-24 iteration of D-Lo is essentially LA's own riff on the 2019-20 vintage with the Golden State Warriors, when he inked a maximum contract as part of the sign-and-trade that shipped out Kevin Durant to the Brooklyn Nets. The Dubs didn't want Russell the player, who as a ball-dominant chucker was an awkward fit alongside superstar point guard Stephen Curry and key offensive facilitator Draymond Green. The Dubs wanted the trade asset that Russell's contract represented.

Midway through that season, with rival teams somehow none the wiser, the Warriors managed to pretty much trick the Minnesota Timberwolves into trading them Andrew Wiggins, a future top-three protected lottery pick (which eventually turned into Jonathan Kuminga in 2021), and a future second rounder (which the Warriors later flipped) for Russell. Wiggins would evolve into a critical two-way All-Star contributor on Golden State's 2022 title-winning team, while Russell continues to perform a vanishing act for whichever team he's on every postseason. After a high-scoring preseason, Kuminga seems poised for a breakout this year on an aging Warriors team desperate for youthful athleticism.

But I digress.

Point being, Golden State managed to pawn off Russell to a sucker.

This year, it's the Lakers' turn.

He is being blatantly featured in an offense that would probably benefit more from using his current backup, new addition Gabe Vincent, who's a more deferential point guard (making him a better fit alongside stars LeBron James and Anthony Davis) and an utterly superior defender. He's also shown an aptitude for stepping up in playoff moments, whereas Russell generally shrinks. Los Angeles is overplaying Russell on purpose. The goal is inflating his counting stats, and thus hopefully his trade value, to package him for a superior player.

Last year, in 17 regular season games with LA, Russell averaged 17.4 points on .484/.414/.735 shooting splits, 6.1 assists, 2.9 rebounds, and 0.6 steals a game. Things turned ugly in the postseason, a scant few sharpshooting blips aside. By the Western Conference Finals against the Denver Nuggets, he had given Ham no choice but to favor own backup, Dennis Schröder, over him. Schröder was a far better perimeter defender, and Russell's offense had eroded to the point where he was being bested on that end of the floor, too. Across those fateful four contests, D-Lo averaged 6.3 points on .323/.133/.750 shooting splits (that's not a typo), 3.5 assists (against 1.5 turnovers), two rebounds and 0.5 steals. By the fourth and final game of that series, Russell had ceded his by-then ceremonial spot in the Lakers' starting five to Schröder, too.

Will the Lakers try to package, say, Russell, Rui Hachimura (who, now that he's been demoted back to a back-up, also looks severely overpaid right now), and a lottery-protected draft pick for the Philadelphia 76ers' James Harden or the Dallas Mavericks' Kyrie Irving? How about the Toronto Raptors' OG Anunoby?

They certainly should.

Depending on how those clubs' respective seasons play out, any of those good-but-flawed guards could be on the move for the right price. Yes, Masai Ujiri allegedly rejected a whopping three picks for OG Anunoby, but he's never getting offered that much again for a good 3-and-D wing who, while a solid starter, will most likely never become an All-Star.

Bill Simmons of The Ringer was the first pundit, at least on my radar, to propose this 4D chess angle on Russell's re-signing over the summer. He has pitched multiple frameworks centered around offloading the veteran guard out of OSU.

In Russell's first game with LA this season Tuesday, the 6'4" guard proved streakily helpful. He couldn't get much cooking in the first half of LA's rematch with the team that knocked it out of the playoffs last year, the Denver Nuggets, but poured in some timely triples in the third quarter before fading again down the stretch.

In a team-high (seriously, Darvin Ham is trying to sell this guy hard) 36:11, Russell scored 11 points on 4-of-12 shooting from the floor (2-of-5 from deep) and 1-of-2 shooting from the charity stripe, dished out seven dimes (against three turnovers), pulled down four boards, and swiped one steal. Mid numbers for a mid player. But something better is out there for LA. And D'Angelo Russell just might be this team's best realistic chance at obtaining it.

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