The incident in which D’Angelo Russell recorded his then Lakers teammate Nick Young stating that he had cheated on his then-girlfriend turned out to be a blessing to the Warriors point guard.

Who supports this theory is the friend of D’Angelo, the star of the Phoenix Suns Devin Booker. For Booker, the Warriors point guard knew how to handle the criticism, the isolation of his teammates, and the number of enemies he made in the league after this costly blunder. More than that, Russell turned away from the lifestyle of Hollywood and focused more on basketball:

“That distanced him from the Hollywood life, honestly,” Booker told Anthony Slater of The Athletic. “It got him more locked in on work. Blessing in disguise. Eventually got him in a whole new situation. I think the situation in LA, after the incident, was toxic. It’s hard to play basketball like that.”

Russell himself shares how he lived in the league the period after the incident with Young:

“Man,” Russell sighed. “It was tough. I’d say it like this: It was tough because everyone I looked up to was kind of dogging me. I’d go into these arenas and meet these players for the first time, that I was a fan of, and they’d kind of side-shoulder me, like, nah bro.”

Rejected by his idols and many NBA players, D’Angelo Russell saw the focus on basketball as the only way to keep opportunities in the NBA, and this mentality helped him a lot to have a great season with the Brooklyn Nets in 2018-19 season:

“It made it easy for me to be distant and go about work, treat it like it’s work,” said Russell. “I could just go in, don’t have to hi-bye everybody because most likely nobody wants to talk to me, anyway. So it became easy for me to focus on work. Then I saw the work pay off.”

Devin Booker and D’Angelo Russell have been friends since the ninth grade of high school and the Phoenix star has followed this whole process of changing mindset. Both are always in touch and even participated in a Foot Locker commercial together with Ben Simmons and Karl Anthony Towns. The video jokes about the incident of Young and Russell (D ‘Angelo throws his phone out the window giving Simmons the message that it is best to get rid of it to play professional basketball on the NBA ).