D’Angelo Russell’s time in Golden State was short and had few wins, but even during the struggles he could see the organization had a strong, positive culture.

On Instagram Live, he said it was clear the Warriors had built a winning culture over time.

“The culture to winning, it’s not easy to make, it’s not easy to build,” Russell said.

“It comes through time. The coaches that they had over there, you can see why they win, you see why they had the success that they had.”

The Warriors got Russell in a sign-and-trade with the Brooklyn Nets for star forward Kevin Durant.

Russell, who had made his first All-Star game in his final year with the Nets, averaged 23.6 points, 6.2 assists and 3.7 rebounds in 33 games with Golden State.

“They just do it right. It’s a lot of special basketball minds over there that just drives that ship,” Russell said. “It was dope, I enjoyed my whole experience.”

Those basketball minds were always at work, and they ended up cutting Russell’s experience in Golden State short. The guard was traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves for a package that centered around wing Andrew Wiggins.

In a podcast with The Athletic‘s Tim Kawakami last week, Warriors owner Joe Lacob said the trade wasn’t because Russell played poorly, but because the front office thought Wiggins would be a better fit on the roster.

“Even though (Russell’s) a good guy and really performed quite well for us, I think we all made the decision that perhaps there was a better fit out there than that,” Lacob said.

“We had an opportunity to go and get a guy that we thought was a better positional fit, who was the same age, basically made the same money. We thought he could really help our team and would fit better with Steph (Curry) and Klay (Thompson).”