Byron Scott won’t disparage the potential of Los Angeles Lakers guard D’Angelo Russell just because the team canned him after the 2015-16 season was over.
But he’s not ready to declare Russell a future megastar beyond a shadow of a doubt, either.
Here’s what Scott said while making an appearance on The Dan Patrick Show (h/t Lakers Nation):
“I think he (Russell) can (be a star),” Scott said on The Dan Patrick Show. “Obviously, there’s going to be some question marks with that. His work ethic has to get better. His understanding of the game has to get better, but he can flat out score, and he really sees the floor extremely well. He has some tools you can’t teach, but the little intricate parts of the game are the things he has to learn.”
But, it wasn’t just Russell’s work ethic that raised eyebrows with Byron Scott, it was also a sense of entitlement when he came into the league.
“I think some of these guys, when they come into the league, they think they’re entitled, and I thought that’s how he (Russell) felt when he first got with us,” Scott said. “He almost tried to act like he was a veteran, and I tried to make sure that he knew that he wasn’t a veteran, that you have to earn your stripes. So yeah, there were times where I was a little tough on him, just to bring him back down to earth, to let him know that this is not an easy task when you’re in the NBA. That’s the easy part is getting there, the hardest part is staying there, getting better and better. Yeah, I had some tough love for the young man. But, I had a lot of love for him. He was put in some tough situations obviously, but I think he’s going to be a good player.”
There is nothing crazy about this answer from Scott—nothing for us to mock excessively. He makes some really good points and isn’t insulting Russell so much as he is describing plenty of young, up-and-coming star prospects who enter the league.
Not all of them are mentally prepared to pay their dues. Even fewer of them are used to or prepared for anything other than the on-court domination they enjoyed while in high school and college. Grooming them properly is an extensive project, and just because Russell wasn’t some sort of choir boy exception doesn’t mean he’s destined to fail in Los Angeles.
Byron Scott, though, is at least partially to blame for whatever warts remain in Russell. He wasn’t the best leader of youngsters, and it showed in the way he failed to publicly relate to his players. That has to be at least part of the reason why he was fired. The Lakers are gearing up for an extensive rebuild, and they need someone, in this case Luke Walton, who cannot only identify these issues with Russell, but work with him in harmony to solve them.
