Draymond Green takes issue with ‘checked out’ D’Angelo Russell in brutal Game 3 loss

Draymond Green spoke on Russell’s abysmal performance and wants him to take accountability.

“Zero points last night, 0 for 7 from the field, 0 for 6 from three. Little disappointed in D’Lo not being a part of the huddle. Again, I’m on this theme of, as athletes, man, we can always look to blame somebody. Never look no further than yourself. Darvin Ham didn’t go 0 for 6. After seeing that last night, I personally think [he] probably checked out.”

Draymond continued to talk about Russell’s downward spiral in his play, signaling that Russell’s body language signals that he’s checked out.

“After the second half of the season that D’Lo had, it’s unfortunate to see this, not that he’s playing bad, but because You know, you see the body language now, you see the comments now, and it’s like, you kind of got over that hurdle through the trade deadline stuff, you know? So when you come into these playoff series, yeah, you may not have a game one or a great game three, but it’s a seven-game series.”

He added, “So if you stay locked in, you get more opportunities to have those games that you want to have when you let go of the rope, it’s a tough one. And right now it looked like the rope has been let go.”

It’s hard to truly quantify someone’s effort and mentality but D’Angelo Russell has severely struggled against the Nuggets. According to StatMuse, he has averaged 8.7 points, 3.6 assists and 2.4 rebounds in 7 games against the Nuggets and he was largely unproductive in Game 1. Russell finished Saturday’s playoff opener with 13 points on 6-of-20 shooting and only one 3-pointer in nine attempts in 41 minutes on the court. Without Russell’s productivity, the Lakers were never going to beat the Nuggets in this series.

And, unfortunately, the Lakers are in danger of getting swept by Denver for the second year in a row.