Stretch run should be Russell’s time to shine

‘D’Lo’ must take lead to help Nets salvage latest lost season

March 15, 2018 By John Torenli, Sports Editor Brooklyn Daily Eagle

With 14 games left in this season, D’Angelo Russell finally has an opportunity to prove he can become the Nets’ on-court leader and franchise-type player. AP photo by Kathy Willens

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“You say you want a leader.

But you can’t seem to make up your mind.

I think you better close it,

And let me guide you ….”

Lyrics to “Purple Rain,” Prince, 1984

The Nets made their biggest splash of the offseason with the late June acquisition of mercurial guard D’Angelo Russell.

And now it’s finally time for Russell to splash back, if you will.

Russell, who is coming off his best performance as a Net and one that brought the Barclays Center crowd to its feet time and again during Tuesday night’s loss to Toronto, needs to step up now and be the leader Brooklyn needs going forward.

The Nets swapped the franchise’s all-time leading scorer, Brook Lopez, and the rights to the 27th overall pick in last year’s NBA Draft to the Los Angeles Lakers for Russell and veteran center Timofey Mozgov.

For Russell, the new environment created an opportunity to help him shed some of the baggage he had accumulated during those first two years in La-La Land.

The 22-year-old Louisville, Kentucky native was the second overall pick in the 2016 draft and went on to average 14.3 points and 4.0 assists per game over his two years with the Lakers.

He also drew league-wide ire during his rookie season for secretly taping and releasing a video that showed then-teammate Nick Young discussing how he was cheating on his pop-star fiancee Iggy Azalea.

That marriage never took place, and Russell’s matrimony with the Lakers didn’t mature far beyond that point either.

Despite the faux pas, Russell earned NBA All-Rookie Second Team honors in that turbulent first season and improved his numbers the year before Lakers Team President Earvin “Magic” Johnson sent him packing to Downtown Brooklyn.

Johnson went out of his way to give Russell a swift kick out of the Staples Center, openly questioning the still-maturing player’s ability to play well with others and lead a franchise.

“D’Angelo is an excellent player. He has the talent to be an All-Star,” Johnson said before lowering the boom.

“We want to thank him for what he did for us, but what I needed was a leader. I needed somebody also that can make the other players better, and also that players want to play with.”

Ouch!

Coming from one of the NBA’s all-time greatest facilitators and champions, that had to go down hard for a young man still making his way in a grown-man’s game.

But Russell passed on firing back at Johnson and has insisted throughout that his play here in Brooklyn would provide a building block for his future legacy as a franchise-type player.

“A lot of guys take advantage of their opportunity after they get drafted somewhere and go to another place,” Russell told theundefeated.com just last week.

“I want to build my legacy here. I got drafted [by the Lakers], but I don’t want people to remember me as a Laker.”

Through the better part of his first full season as a Net, Russell has only shown brief flashes of being the type of player that can lure big-time free agents to Brooklyn.

Or carry a team by himself as the team’s primary star.

But in his defense, the Ohio State alum missed two months of his first campaign on the corners of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues due to a knee injury.

He worked his way back into playing major minutes slowly under the instruction of head coach Kenny Atkinson, and only now appears to be at full health for the first time since returning to action in January.

On Tuesday night, he showed of the wares general manager Sean Marks was so excited about when he brought Russell to Brooklyn this past summer.

Russell scored a season-high 32 points, two more than the 30 he dropped on Indiana in the season opener that saw Jeremy Lin go down for the year with a devastating knee injury of his own.

More impressively, Russell opened the game by draining seven straight 3-pointers in the opening quarter, a shooting display that had the Barclays Center rocking each time he rose up and knocked down a long-distance bomb.

The performance came two nights after Russell poured in 26 points at Philadelphia, and caught the attention of his teammates, who have been waiting for most of this season to see Russell emerge as a consistent scoring presence.

“He’s just getting aggressive,” veteran forward DeMarre Carroll said of Russell following Tuesday’s game.

“He’s been aggressive in taking his shots,” Carroll added. “They are open shots that are swing-swings and not those forced shots. They are not what he used to take; you can tell he’s been training and taking shots that the defense gives him, and he’s not trying to force it.”

Forcing your way into superstardom is not easy to do on a team that is threatening to finish with the NBA’s worst record for a second straight season.

But Russell has 14 games remaining, beginning with Friday’s tilt against visiting Philadelphia here, to prove he can at least be the Nets’ front man for this final month.

He is averaging 17.8 points and 4.7 assists while putting in nearly 30 minutes of court time per night through his first six games in March.

Russell also boasts a team-leading 16.1 points per game average despite all the missed playing time and limited minutes upon his return from injury.

So now it is finally time for him to take full advantage of the stage he yearned for in Los Angeles but ultimately found here in Brooklyn.

“There is a lot of opportunity here,” Russell said. “It’s an organization that is on the rise. No one really knows what the organization is about. I feel like with the staff we have and the players that we have, we can work together to make it something.”