If a player’s rookie year is like their first steps into the NBA, D’Angelo Russell didn’t exactly take off running. The Los Angeles Lakers young point guard stumbled at times, fell on his butt at others, and eventually started to show consistent flashes of becoming the type of player the team envisioned when they selected him with the second overall pick in the 2015 NBA Draft.
Some of Russell’s struggles came on the court where, despite all of his signs of progress, he averaged 3.1 turnovers a game while shooting an aggressively “meh” 41 percent from the field for the year.