As far as I can tell, this is the first game of D’Angelo Russell’s career where he had a high total of assists while not riding a ridiculously hot three-point shooter. Sweet! Now this is something I can get behind. 11 assists, a career high, and not all of them were to Nick Young! Some of them were to Tarik Black! Wringing an assist from Black should count as two in my opinion. Thus, I consider Russell to actually have 14 assists in this game, far surpassing his previous career high set last game instead of just barely surpassing it.
Russell has already shown that he can score in bunches. Now that he has shown he can assist in bunches as well, it’s probably time for people to assign more expectations to him. It’s not enough to do these things only once in a while; the second overall pick should start developing consistency in year two. No rush, though. At this point in John Wall’s career, I was calling him a bust every chance I got, something I’m not doing with Russell. Maybe I should be though? Lakers fans seem to get riled up no matter what I say about this dude, so I don’t have anything to lose.