At a time when pretty much everyone wants to vilify Lakers rookie D’Angelo Russell for secretly videotaping teammate Nick Young’s apparent admission that he’s cheating on his fiancée (it’s still unclear how the video was leaked), an NFL player has pushed back on Russell’s behalf.
Via CBS Detroit, Lions cornerback Darius Slay has defended Russell both on Twitter and through a video that uses plenty of colorful language.
“This young man ain’t nothing but 20 years old,” Slay said on Periscope. “You all acting like he snitched or something, he didn’t even snitch, his phone leaked the video out or something.”
Slay faults the Lakers organization and players for isolating Russell, and Slay points out that the potential punishment far outweighs the crime.
“There way more snitches out there then just Russell, you all really throwing that [guy] under the bus. That man 20 years old, you all could ruin that man’s career,” Slay said. “That man got a momma to take care of probably, daddy to take care of, brothers and sisters to take care of. You know, you all trying to dog this man like this man probably can’t go nowhere now. You all is eating this man alive.”
Slay has a point, to an extent. Usually, people get outraged (genuinely or otherwise) about incidents of this general type, discuss and debate the matter until something happens that changes the topic, and then move on. With Russell, the question becomes whether the problem lingers beyond the crowning of a new college basketball champion later this week or the conclusion of the NBA regular season next month.
A separate question is whether Slay would feel the same way if a rookie did this to Slay or one of his other teammates. Regardless of how the Lakers and the team’s fans are handling the situation, there’s a good chance that an NFL locker room would handle this in a way that would eventually result in Ted Wells making several million more dollars for his law firm.
