25-under-25: Biggest disappointments

1. D’Angelo Russell

Look, I remain a resident of D’Angelo Russell Island, but I concede that with each passing year, there is less reason for me to keep my plot of land there as his tantalizing potential fails to crystallize in a concrete way on the court. There’s absolutely a part of me that sees his first two years in Los Angeles as awkward, lost years when he was in as bad a situation as a young point guard could find themselves in, and last year as another unfortunately lost year due to injury. That part of me sees that silky smooth shot combined with his court vision and projects him as a future All-Star, a guard that can both score and create for others with equal skill.

There’s another part of me, though, that thinks that we’ve already seen who D’Angelo Russell is, and that if he was going to improve and become who he could be, we would have seen signs of that transformation happening already. He probably wouldn’t have shot 32 percent from 3 last year or have failed to shoot better than 42 percent in a season if he was really going to imminently break out, after all.

It really comes down to faith — are you willing to believe in Russell, to bet on potential and nascent talent or are you just going to consider what we’ve already seen and say that the case is closed? I’m probably wrong, but I’m taking the former option. Even so, the fact that I feel silly publicly stating my belief in Russell’s future as NBA player kind of sums up how disappointing his first three seasons have been, right?