D’Angelo Russell is on his way from the Los Angeles Lakers to the Brooklyn Nets for the second time in his career. Although in 2024, his trade is under significantly different circumstances than in the summer of 2017.
In 2017, Russell was traded in part as a money-saving maneuver to get away from the contract of Timofey Mozgov, but it was also in part because he had alienated himself in the locker room after some in-fighting with Lakers guard Nick Young. The Lakers felt Russell didn’t have the maturity to be the leader of a rebuilding roster.