D'Angelo Russell On Injury Report, Discusses Future In Free Agency

The Angela Russell was the biggest name coming to the Lakers at the trade deadline and frankly he's been fantastic for LA averaging 19 and 6 on great shooting percentages hitting 40% from 3, 47% from the field. Sure there's night to night fluctuations but overall the Angela Russell has been fantastic in his second stand with the Lakers now. The Lakers announcing he may be out for tonight's game against Oklahoma City Thunder been downgraded to questionable due to a hip issue. So fingers crossed nothing official up to this point major major game tonight against the Thunder so important not only in the standings but also the tiebreaker between the two teams on the lines of fingers crossed. Hopefully the Angela Russell is good to go for this one but he is questionable and we have to imagine that we're not going to know for sure until 30 minutes before game time but Dila was also recently asked about how he feels being in Los Angeles and I thought he gave a very candid answer that gives us a little bit of a window into his mindset heading into his summer which will include free agency for him and whether or not he'll stay in LA. Here's what Dila had to say. I'm just at peace to be honest.

I've been at peace for a long time so coming in to the environment of all that he needs I could possibly be in I'm comfortable with it. And then when I was here people judged we off of being the only Indian so going back and watching my interviews and watching how I interact things like that seem ways that I could go and not make a distraction of my image so it allowed me to kind of lock into that and also I've always been good at basketball so now if you can go this time we don't have distractions off the field. Okay for the last question. Do you scale it on? Not yet. No. I'm a free agent for summer and trade at least season so to get comfortable somewhere it's not easy for me so until I am I won't be comfortable. So Dila you know he's become so much more introspective certainly than when he was younger and you just you listen to his comments and it's very clear how much more mature he is as a person you can see it in his game as well out on the floor it's truly impressive when you look at these strides that D'Angelo Russell has made compared to where he was when he was a much younger player in his first with the Lakers and this is what tends to happen with people right as they get older they grow up they get a bit wiser and D'Angelo Russell certainly seems to be doing that and I thought his comments on next season on how comfortable he is with the Lakers whether or not he feels at home I thought that was really interesting you know he's not wrong I mean he says that he doesn't really feel at home here yet because he's going to be a free agent I mean there's only what we know there's going to be nine games left in the season hopefully there's more there's a post season run here but other than that nothing is guaranteed for D'Angelo Russell in Los Angeles now of course there's been rumors that the Lakers would like to keep D'Angelo Russell I can confirm that the Lakers made the trade with at least the thought in their head of we need to give him an extension we need to keep him around for at least another year two years whatever it's going to be we need to make sure that we give him an extension this isn't going to be just a one-term thing but that still does not guarantee the future for D'Angelo Russell and you look at what's happened over the course of his career drafted by the Lakers traded Brooklyn Brooklyn gets a chance to get Kevin Durant he's traded to Gold State now Gold State gives him a long-term deal that was in the sign-in trade with the Brooklyn Nets but it was clear from day one that the Warriors weren't necessarily trading for D'Angelo Russell they were trading to keep that salary so they could eventually use him and flip him again in another deal they didn't want to just lose Kevin Durant and not have any way to replace that talent they replaced him with D'Angelo Russell even though they knew that they probably weren't going to keep him long-term so he got a long-term contract from the Warriors but it's not like the Warriors were really committing to him they were committing to having that salary spot moving forward he gets traded to the Wolves and it seemed like he found a long-term home there and then when it comes time for him to be a free agent the Wolves move him and instead flip over to Mike Conley and say no we're not going to make that long-term commitment to you either so now here D'Angelo Russell is coming into free agency in July and I think he would like to stay he would like to be a Los Angeles Laker he's talked about seeing himself as their point guard of the future but until he knows for sure that this is set that he's got a long-term deal that a team is finally going to commit to him he can't necessarily feel at home and I don't blame him and look that's not something on the lake that doesn't mean the Lakers should turn around and give him an extension immediately or anything like that it's just the reality of the situation the Lakers will let things play out and then figure things out from there in terms of what kind of a number you can agree to with D'Angelo Russell but I can understand where he's coming from and why he wouldn't feel at home just yet given that no place has truly committed to him being the guy that's going to be their lead guard or going to be a part of their team for the foreseeable future seems like every team has acquired him with the idea of eventually moving on from him or at least have shifted towards that mindset very very quickly got to be frustrating for a young player who seems like he wants to put down roots somewhere and wants to have that kind of stability hopefully he is able to find it here with the Los Angeles Lakers again so far so good and man oh man the Lakers sure can use him tonight so hopefully he is good to go against the thunder Lakers nation give me your thoughts on D'Angelo Russell in the comment section down below till next time see you and stay safe.

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