At this stage of his career, Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James has accomplished just about everything a single player can. Part of that is due to his physical gifts, longevity and pure talent, but much of it has to do with the fact that he is one of the smartest players to ever play the game. That’s something that Lakers guard D’Angelo Russell has consistently praised since re-joining the Lakers last season.
Russell got to watch James from afar during his first seven and a half seasons in the league. Now that they are teammates, the two have formed a rapport that has allowed Russell to become a more impactful player as he learns from the all-time great.
Russell spoke about how he specifically learns from James, and how asking questions may not always be the best way to go about learning new information from a player of LeBron’s caliber and intelligence, via The Backyard Podcast:
“Bron is one of those guys that you can learn more from by sitting back and listening, watching… He’s a smart dude, he knows all the rebuttals, answers, responses, answers to that. He knows the little knick knacks to this, rules. He’s a very smart dude. For me, I feel like I benefit a lot when I’m just listening to him. Just watching. It may even be from a distance. Not on no weird shit, but how he’s interacting, how he’s talking, how he’s conversating. That’s something I really picked up on. And then on the court, Bron is really a machine. Because you can’t treat him as if you’re a fan of him on the court. It’s so hard not to say something fan-ish on the court. As an opponent, for a fact, but I’m his teammate and I want to say something. I wanna ask him all these questions, like fanboy shit. But like I know people when they play against him, they wanna ask him those same questions and he’s like ’That’s blood, I smell it. I’m attacking it.’ So it’s gonna to be around all those different dudes, for sure… I had to normalize that because I’m a fan. So the quicker I normalized that this was just LeBron James, alright let’s just keep pushing or whatever, the better I am. The better I was. The more myself I was. But if I was still stuck in the ‘Oh my god bro, can you sign this for me bro? Can we get this selfie bro?’ It just gets weird. That ain’t really me.”
The Lakers guard has worked hard to take lessons from James without necessarily being a fan, as the soon-to-be first ballot Hall of Famer has likely seen plenty of that over his 21 seasons in the NBA. And given the way that Russell has been playing in the second half of the season, how he’s going about it seems to be working.
LeBron James praises D’Angelo Russell ability to get hot at any time
LeBron James has had plenty of praise for Russell, most recently for the guard’s ability to get hot for the Lakers at any time. And it seems the two are benefitting from playing alongside one another, not just Russell benefitting from James.
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