Nick Young says he never fought D’Angelo Russell following video leak because he never had opportunity

Back in the year 2016, a video taken by D’Angelo Russell was leaked in which Nick Young admitted to cheating on his fiancee at the time, musician Iggy Azalea. Both Young and Russell were teammates on the Los Angeles Lakers.

Azalea decided to break up with Young a few months after the video was revealed to the public.

Young recently reflected on the whole incident and explained why he didn’t fight Russell over what happened.

“Mitch Kupchak and them told me, ‘Don’t come to the arena. Don’t come to practice. None of that. If you do anything, we gonna take your money and all that,'” Young recalled. “… And then when I got there, it was security there. … So, I couldn’t get a chance to. And by the time, once I seen him the next season, it was, the s— had died down then.”

Russell and Young spent another season as teammates following the incident. The drama took place near the end of the 2015-16 season, and their last season as teammates was the 2016-17 season. Russell then landed with the Brooklyn Nets while Young landed with the Golden State Warriors.

Young was already long in the tooth by the time his Lakers stint came to an end, as his last NBA action came when he appeared in four games with the Denver Nuggets in the 2018-19 season. But before he spent a short time with the Nuggets, he served as a role player for a Warriors team that went on to win a title in the year 2018.

He played in 80 regular-season games for the Warriors during the 2017-18 campaign and provided consistent scoring punch off the pine. In his one season in Golden State, he averaged 7.3 points per game while shooting 41.2 percent from the field and 37.7 percent from 3-point range. He also appeared in 20 playoff games that season.

As for Russell, he perhaps had his most productive season in the pros to this point during his time with the Nets. He earned the only All-Star appearance of his pro career in his second season in Brooklyn, when he averaged 21.1 points per game across 81 appearances.

Ironically, Russell is now in the middle of his second stint with the Lakers and is averaging 12.5 points per game across 11 games played so far in the 2024-25 regular season. He finished with just eight points in Los Angeles’ recent win over the Memphis Grizzlies on Nov. 13.