D’Angelo Russell remembers his relationship with Kobe Bryant
DLo shared the same locker room as the Lakers legend during his rookie season in the NBA in 2015.
Many of today’s NBA players grew up watching Kobe Bryant and were inspired to one day emulate what he did during his time with the Lakers. One of them was D’Angelo Russell who shared a locker room with the Los Angeles Lakers legend in his rookie year and what was Kobe’s final season in the NBA.
The 28-year-old spoke about his relationship with Kobe Bryant during the 2016 season and how he helped him mature in a short time. Having a veteran with a great knowledge of the game can change a player’s trajectory, but Russell points out that the young player has to be willing to receive that knowledge and mentorship.
D’Angelo Russell admitted he wasn’t ready for advice
“Big moment. I mean, again, I was naive to his whole legacy at the time. I’m 18, bro, so I’m young and dumb. It’s all fun. Kobe Bryant, let me see if I can make him laugh, just young and dumb, so I learned that the hard way,” Russell began explaining on the Run Your Race podcast.
“He wasn’t laughing, he was serious the whole time. But he treated me like a little brother, it wasn’t like ‘get out of here,’ it was like ‘little brother, you shouldn’t do that, think about this. ’ I’d be going 100 miles an hour and he’d be talking like Mr. Miyagi, I’d listen to him, and then I’d be moving again. Then I’d get a text from him, and then I’d be moving again. It was a blur, really, but some things come back and I remember a lot of things he would say,” she added.
“It was a good time, bro, just to have that in your first year. It’s like being a rookie and getting drafted by a championship team and then going on their roll after they just won one, like Denver, Boston. That sets you up for year four and year five in your career,” Russell, who re-signed with the Lakers last summer, continued.
“You’re going to know how to move, you’re going to know how to approach because you remember, man, Jrue Holiday was doing this. Man, Jaylen Brown was doing this... But I was 18, so the knowledge that [Kobe] was sharing was way over my head and I was just looking at his face like [nodding] and not listening to anything he was saying until like years later,” DLo concluded.