For all the hemming and hawing about whether or not D’Angelo Russell is a true point guard (whatever that means), the modern game has at least in part rendered positional designations like that pointless.
Russell may have returned to the Los Angeles Lakers’ starting lineup as a nominal shooting guard, but his career-high 40 point, six assist performance in the Lakers’ 125-120 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers made it clear he can’t quite be pigeonholed.
"I’m a basketball player, not a point guard or a shooting guard,” Russell told reporters following the game (as transcribed by Tania Ganguli of the Los Angeles Times), and he’s right. Whether he or Clarkson are playing “point guard” or “shooting guard” doesn’t make a huge difference in the modern game, or in the type of offense Lakers head coach Luke Walton runs with them on the floor.
Despite technically starting at shooting guard, Russell still used more possessions than any Laker, with 28.7 percent of the Lakers’ possessions ending in a shot, assist, or turnover from Russell.
Take this possession for example. Russell is handling the ball and takes a screen from Randle (which he often has when starting at “point guard”) while the Lakers’ actual “point guard” (in this case Jordan Clarkson) loops along the baseline towards the wing as Nick Young has this season when Russell is with the starters.
These two pick-and-rolls Russell runs with Ivica Zubac (in addition to being nearly identical to each other) look almost exactly the same as the stuff he was running while starting at “point guard,” just with Clarkson spacing the floor instead of Young:
So was Russell just playing “point guard” in the traditional sense then, dominating possessions? Nope. Even on this play, in which he’s the only traditional ball-handler on the floor, it’s Julius Randle bringing the ball down and setting up Russell for an open 3-pointer:
As Russell says, he’s a basketball player, and a versatile one at that. This season has shown he and the Lakers would be well-served by getting him a secondary ball-handler to play consistent minutes with so he can more often leverage the threat of his shooting in addition to his own skills as a creator.
The numbers have been famously bad defensively, but it sounds like the Lakers are going to give Clarkson the opportunity to be that guy with Russell in the starting lineup going forward, something Russell told reporters he thought was “dope.”
It certainly worked Sunday, allowing Russell to rack up all kinds of history:
Per Elias, D’Angelo Russell (at 21 years, 24 days old) is the youngest Lakers player with at least 40 points in a regular season game.
— Tania Ganguli (@taniaganguli) March 20, 2017
@MarkG_Medina So he's the first to do it that shoots left-handed. Quite the accomplishment.
— Drew Garrison (@DrewGarrisonSBN) March 20, 2017
All while impressing some of the best players in the league with his performance:
LeBron James on D'Angelo Russell: "He's a special guy. He's a special player. Russell was extremely hot tonight & those guys fed off him."
— Serena Winters (@SerenaWinters) March 20, 2017
Kyrie continuing on D'Angelo: "I've been playing against him for a few years in the league, and I understand what he means to the Lakers."
— Serena Winters (@SerenaWinters) March 20, 2017
It probably wasn’t intentional, but notice that neither LeBron James or Kyrie Irving tried to pin a positional label on Russell.
Maybe the rest of us shouldn’t, either.
All stats per NBA.com and Basketball-Reference.com. Harrison Faigen is co-host of the Locked on Lakers podcast (subscribe here), and you can follow him on Twitter at @hmfaigen.