On June 30, 2019, news broke that the Warriors agreed to acquire D'Angelo Russell from the Brooklyn Nets in a sign-and-trade transaction.
On Feb. 6, 2020, Golden State traded Russell to the Minnesota Timberwolves.
We'll probably never know for sure if the plan all along was to ship D-Lo out of town before the trade deadline, but that isn't important in the grand scheme.
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What does matter, however, is this piece of information from Anthony Slater of The Athletic:
Voices that matter in the locker room soured on Russell as a long-term fit rather quickly. He wasn’t a disruptive personality, just not a beneficial component to a winning defense or a correct fit positionally, considering the two soon-to-return star guards are franchise pillars.
Let's connect some dots.
Back on Oct. 23, Draymond Green said this about D-Lo:
Golden State Warriors
"Watching him in practice yesterday, I told him, 'Oh you showed me you can defend. I didn't know you could. So that's the expectation now. It's interesting because you just never know what's been asked of someone. You can easily judge a situation and say, 'Oh man, he hasn't really defended much,' or, 'He's not that good on the defensive end.'
"But if he's never been asked to defend, it's kind of hard to make that judgment. Obviously, we're going to ask him to defend. Yesterday, he was asked to defend and he showed that he can. I told him that'll be the expectation moving forward.
"Sorry, buddy, you showed it."
Furthermore, watch Draymond's reaction here:
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We won't speculate any further and we aren't trying to pile on Russell now that he has been traded.
Just doing some math over here and providing some context ...