Lakers jersey history No. 1 — D'Angelo Russell
As the Lakers approach their 80th season of existence (they were founded back in 1946 as the Detroit Gems in the National Basketball League), LeBron Wire is taking a look at each player who has worn their jersey, whether it has been a purple and gold one or the ones they donned back in the Midwest during their early years.
Here, we take a look at someone every Lakers fan knows and remembers: D'Angelo Russell.
Russell was the No. 2 pick in the 2015 NBA Draft by the Lakers after one productive season at Ohio State University, where he was the Big Ten Freshman of the Year and won the Jerry West Award while being named to the All-Big Ten first team.
The Lakers were entering Kobe Bryant's final season and were just starting to accumulate promising young players. It was hoped that Russell would become their point guard of the future and someone who would lead them into their next era of success.
But he was slow to develop and shot just 40.8% from the field in his first two pro seasons. He also displayed some immaturity, especially when he was involved in that viral social media incident with then-teammate Nick Young.
The Lakers traded Russell to the Brooklyn Nets in June 2017. There, he started to show some growth. A hot streak midway through the 2018-19 season earned him an All-Star berth, and that season, he averaged over 20 points a game for the first time.
He was sent to the Golden State Warriors in the summer of 2019 and was then traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves in February 2020. His shooting efficiency dropped below par, but during the 2022-23 season, he finally started to shoot well on a consistent basis.
That's when the Lakers brought him back as part of the deal that mercifully jettisoned Russell Westbrook. Russell played well enough to take them to the 2023 Western Conference Finals, which led to some optimism about their prospects for the following season.
But by this point, Russell had shown a troubling trend of not playing up to his standards in the playoffs. He would be briefly benched during the 2023-24 campaign while going through a nasty slump, but he would recover enough to set a franchise record for the most made 3-pointers in a season.
He struggled mightily with his shooting early this past season, and Los Angeles then traded him back to Brooklyn in late December for 3-and-D forward Dorian Finney-Smith. It was a trade that helped L.A., but it didn't help Russell, as he ended the season making 39% of his field-goal attempts and 31.4% of his 3-point tries.
He is now a member of the Dallas Mavericks, where he will fill in at point guard while Kyrie Irving recovers from a torn ACL. He will have another opportunity to contribute to a team that has high expectations while reuniting with former Lakers teammates Anthony Davis and Max Christie.
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