To be fair, it happened during a loss, so how good was it, really?
Notching his first start in 11 games (LeBron James was out, so Darvin Ham reshuffled his first five), $17.3 million Los Angeles Lakers point guard D’Angelo Russell submitted his best performance of the 2023-24 NBA season during a 132-125 loss against the Utah Jazz on Saturday night.
The 6’3″ one-time All-Star scored 39 points while shooting 15-of-26 from the field (6-of-11 from long range) and 3-of-3 from the foul line, passed for eight assists, two blocks and one steal across nearly 41 minutes. He registered a -2 plus-minus on the night
He was nothing but humble in discussing his play, and noted that part of the reason he got so many looks was due to defensive scheming on Utah’s part, per Broderick Turner of The Los Angeles Times.
“I mean, it’s just fun. Just hoopin’, as simple as that,” Russell said. “They had some coverages that tried to take [Anthony Davis, LA’s best healthy player] out the game, allowed us to play off the catch-and-attack closeouts all game. We missed some. We made some. I thought we had a lot of good looks. Just try to take this aggression and add it to the next game.”
The much-maligned backcourt duo of Russell and Austin Reaves was actually pretty solid in tandem last night, at least on offense.
Reaves scored 19 points on 7-of-8 shooting from the floor (1-of-2 from deep) and 1-of-2 shooting from the charity stripe, while also grabbing four boards and serving up two dimes.