Lakers have turned D'Angelo Russell loose, and it might be turning their season around

Russell has been scorching hot since being reinserted into the starting lineup

When the Los Angeles Lakers signed D'Angelo Russell to a two-year, $37 million deal last summer, it was widely believed to be a contract designed to be traded: Not an outrageous commitment for another team, and enough money to meet salary-matching requirements in a deal for that third All-Star the Lakers have been threatening to get for the last few years. 

But then something happened. After a dreadful December in which he averaged 10 points per game and wound up benched, Russell was put back into the starting lineup on Jan. 13 at Utah -- where he went for 39 points -- and he's been cooking ever since. 

So hot was Russell in the weeks leading up to the deadline that the Lakers reportedly changed their stance on trading him. Who knows whether a worthy deal was out there to be had in the first place, but either way, they kept him, and in his first game with the weight of possibly being traded off his mind, Russell remained scorching hot with 30 points and six 3-pointers in L.A.'s win over the Pelicans on Friday.

Over one second-quarter stretch, Russell scored 14 straight Lakers points in under two minutes, cashing four 3-pointers. 

For the final triple, watch as LeBron James catches in the corner and just feeds it right back to Russell, who is feeding off the confidence his teammates and coaches have all spoken about having in him, and continue to demonstrate with deferential plays like this. 

That's a heat-check 3 by Russell, but don't dismiss it as simply the result of a hot streak. He set the play up by beating Zion Williamson to the rim for L.A.'s first bucket of the game. Now he has Zion on an island and pulls up. This is a guy feeling every part of a three-level scoring arsenal right now. 

And he's doing it in multiple ways. Spotting up, where he ranks in the 84th percentile, per Synergy. His long preferred pick-and-roll game. But what's really standing out are these one-on-one opportunities that he has earned by delivering consistent buckets of his own creation. 

Since being reinserted into the starting lineup, Russell has isolated 25 times, per Synergy tracking. Over the 25 games prior to Jan. 13, he did so only five times, and never more than once in a single game. A couple of isolations a game isn't some huge number. But they tell a larger story of a natural scorer being provided with more and more opportunity to, indeed, play naturally. 

Darvin Ham, who says he is constantly encouraging Russell to be "decisive, deliberate and aggressive," is fully trusting Russell, even while sharing the court with LeBron, to control the offense for real stretches, to call his own number with confidence, without fear of consequence, and it is bringing out the best in a guy who has always needed control of his own rhythms to be the best version of himself. 

"Asking him ways I can help him orchestrate what's going on out there," Ham said, describing his interactions with Russell. "He's calling stuff, we're doing play-calling back and forth between [Le]Bron, him, myself, Phil Handy, [Austin Reaves], we're all just trying to make sure we stay organized. 

"I give [Russell] the freedom and he'll look at me and give the thumbs up, letting me know he's got something or a play planned out already when there's a dead ball and someone is shooting a free throw," Ham continued. "So just giving him that freedom and constantly, myself, the staff, his teammates, encouraging him to stay aggressive."

Again, the importance of granting this kind of authority to a player like Russell cannot be overstated. It's a tight balance, because there have been plenty of stretches in Russell's career, both with the Lakers and in other situations, where his play has not warranted such a green light. With LeBron on the court, it's easy, and frankly smart most of the time, to just cede control to him. 

But LeBron is at a different stage in his career. He surely relishes having a guy he can depend on to take pressure off him to create everything. Reaves does it. And now with Russell, whose usage rate has taken over a 15% jump over this most recent stretch as a starter, doing it at this high a level, the Lakers suddenly look like a dangerous team again. 

It's not to say some of the same issues won't arise come playoff time, assuming the Lakers make it there. When Russell isn't generating offense at such an elite level, his defense, though he does put in the effort, can become too detrimental to stomach in a postseason series. We saw that last season. 

But for now, Russell is giving the Lakers a legit Big 3. Skeptics will say it isn't sustainable, and surely they have plenty of past evidence to support that skepticism. But what if Russell really is this good a player so long as he's put in position to dictate his own game? He was an All-Star in Brooklyn. We saw him play at that kind of level at times in Minnesota. 

But his time with Golden State and the Lakers has always seen him in positions where the players around him have been so great, and the expectations of the team have been so high, that Russell has had to find his groove as part of the support staff. It makes sense from a traditional hierarchal standpoint, but in terms of bringing the best out of Russell, he needs the freedom to play like he's the best player on the team. 

And in giving him that freedom, maybe, just maybe, that's how his teams can, in turn, become the best version of themselves. And make no mistake, the best version of this Lakers team is scary as hell. Just recently I picked them to make the conference finals, not necessarily because I expect Russell to keep playing this great, but because, pretty simply, they have LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and I can comfortably rate Austin Reaves as a legit playoff No. 3. 

Russell is the X-factor. If he keeps playing like this, to me, the Lakers are a sincere championship threat. They're not any kind of favorite, but they're a threat. And in the end, that's what Lakers fans wanted from the trade deadline: To put a team in the court that can compete with anyone. 

They're doing that now, and they didn't have to make a trade to make it happen. If this version of Russell, given the ways he's being deployed, is real and sustainable, which is admittedly still a big question mark, then it would appear they had the influx of talent they needed all along. He was sitting right there on their bench. They just needed to get him back in the starting lineup and in rhythm to find out what he and they could be.