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On Friday, Bleacher Report published a story by Kevin Ding about Los Angeles Lakers coach Luke Walton. The hook: at 36 years old, Walton is the NBA's youngest coach, and that's part of what makes him such a good fit with a young, rebuilding Lakers team.

In the piece, Los Angeles guard D'Angelo Russell raves about Walton: it feels like they've known each other for years, veterans vouch for him, he knows how to win. As well as calling Walton a "big brother figure" and making fun of his "overly strong Old Spice deodorant," Russell mentioned playing as Walton in the "NBA 2K" series of video games:

"I told him I remember playing with him on (NBA) 2K; I used to always play as him. I'm a fan. I'm definitely a fan. Because he was a point forward. I can't speak on Elgin Baylor and all those guys, but my era, I know he was a point forward."

It's a totally innocuous story, right? Russell was probably choosing the Lakers to play as Kobe Bryant, now his former teammate, and his new coach was also on the team. It's a nice little anecdote, just like when Russell tells Ding that when he sees Walton "do something crazy" in a classic game on NBA TV, he'll record it and send it to him.

All of this is to drive home the central point of the feature: Walton's players already relate to him. Stephen Jackson, though, saw the quote about "NBA 2K"and took something else from it. In Jackson's view, this is all that's wrong with "the new NBA," and it's "sad" that Russell is "brown-nosing" like this:

OK, fine: "To be real Luke Walton didn't pick Luke Walton on 2k" is a pretty funny line. But is this really worth being mad about?

Russell is an easy target for former players because of last season's Nick Young fiasco, but there's no way he deserves this. After everything he went through as a rookie under Byron Scott, it's clearly a great thing that Russell and his new coach get along. And hey, maybe they can even play "NBA 2K17"against each other -- Walton's certainly young enough to be into it.