D’Angelo Russell says LeBron James gave him some ‘very good intel’ on spanking his kids

Los Angeles Lakers guard D’Angelo Russell revealed that his teammate in LeBron James gave the 28-year-old some helpful parenting advice.

“I remember vividly asking LeBron about spanking his kids and all of that and he gave me some very good intel on that,” Russell told Andscape. “And then A.D. (Anthony Davis) has given me some good advice on having a daughter as well and I hear those things. I take little notes mentally and it all comes to light at some point. You asked about it and that was the first thing I thought of because I remember those things and I hear it. Like I said, I’m a fan of asking all the questions. …

“All my friends have girls and they say, ‘It’s everything and it’s going to change you.’ A lot of people around me have [daughters]. I try to ask all the right questions and prepare myself for it.”

Russell played some of the better basketball of his NBA career with the Lakers — the team that drafted him with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2015 NBA Draft — during the 2023-24 regular season. Across 76 games played with the storied franchise, he averaged 18.0 points, 3.1 rebounds and 6.3 assists per game on 45.6 percent shooting from the floor and a career-high 41.5 percent from deep.

The floor general was arguably the best 3-point shooter on the Lakers in the regular season. He averaged 3.0 3s made per contest, which ranked tops on the team. For comparison, James averaged the second-most 3-pointers made per game with 2.1.

On top of that, Russell set a franchise record for the most made shots from deep in a single season when he converted his 184th 3-pointer of the season back in March. He ended up making 226 3-pointers in the regular season.

But along with being a lethal 3-point threat, Russell also served as an impactful playmaker in his fourth season as a Laker. He finished second among all Lakers in assists per game, all while averaging a career-low 2.1 turnovers per contest.

Russell’s numbers with Los Angeles indicate that he was debatably the third-most valuable player on the team during the regular season, behind James and Davis.

But it remains to be seen if the point guard will be able to parlay his regular-season success into the playoffs, which the Lakers managed to reach on Tuesday night.

It’s worth mentioning that Russell struggled mightily in his most recent playoff series with the Lakers, which came against the Denver Nuggets in the 2023 NBA Playoffs. He averaged just 6.3 points and 3.5 assists per game while shooting 32.3 percent from the field and 13.3 percent from 3-point range in a series the Lakers lost in four games.

Russell will have a shot to redeem himself when the Lakers start their first-round playoff series against the Nuggets on Saturday night in Denver.