Lakers point guard D'Angelo Russell is either the worst good player or the best bad player in the NBA. His regular stats are almost unfailingly always pretty good—since making his first (and only) All-Star Game appearance in 2019, he's averaged 19.7 points and 6.5 assists on perfectly average efficiency. This isn't revelatory, next level stuff, but it's still very good; amongst all point guards, he has the eighth most total points and eighth most total assists over the last five seasons. And yet, his actual value is somewhat dubious. His production feels passive—somebody has to take shots and somebody has to get assists, so it might as well be Russell. After a disastrous postseason and  amid the urgency to capitalize on LeBron James' final years, Russell is no guarantee to re-sign with the Lakers. Here's why the Lakers would be smart to let Russell walk.

3. Extending D'Angelo Russell would be too expensive

Coming off a four-year, $117 million contract, Russell presumably isn't looking to take a sizable pay cut; before getting dealt to LA, Russell was allegedly discussing a four-year, $100 million contract with the Timberwolves. But more than his actual salary demands, Russell has a giant cap hit, which would preclude the Lakers from making any other major offseason moves.

As such, the Lakers will almost certainly renounce Russell's Bird Rights (the ability to go over the cap to sign a player) in order to clear out his $38.7 million cap hold (basically a placeholder on a team's salary sheet, indicating that they have dibs on the player). Even if Russell won't sign for anything close to $38.7 million, he would clutter up the Lakers' cap sheet to the point that they'd be locked into their current roster (his cap hit would ultimately reflect his actual salary, but not until he signs his contract). In essence, the Lakers would be forced to choose between keeping Russell or upgrading their roster in free agency or in some other inventive way.

In this case, letting Russell go is the natural decision; however good Russell may be, he's not good enough to forego making a potential upgrade.

2. He disappeared in the playoffs

In terms of purely his regular season performance, Russell is worth extending; his 17 post-trade deadline games with the Lakers was one of the best and most efficient stretches of his career as he averaged 20.3 points and 7.0 assists per game while shooting 48.4 percent from the field and 41.4 percent on three pointers. To a degree, he was the ideal guard to play alongside LeBron James, equally capable of playing with or without the ball.

But as the playoffs progressed, Russell gradually unravelled. His production declined in each round. In the first round, he averaged a very respectable 16.7 points, 3.7 rebounds and 5.2 assists per game. By the Western Conference Finals, though, he was a total mess. His stats (6.3 points, 2.5 rebounds and 3.2 assists on rancid 32.3 percent shooting) were about as bad as they could possibly be. His impact, somehow, was even worse—the Lakers were outscored by 47 points in D'Angelo Russell's 94 minutes.

While a bad postseason series isn't always a sweeping indictment of a player's ability, you're held to a different standard when you play with LeBron James; his teams are judged purely for how far they advance and how much they win. Despite getting swept, the Lakers were very evenly matched against the Nuggets—in the end, Russell's cataclysmic minutes proved to be the difference.

1. LeBron James doesn't want him around

This is really all that matters. If LeBron James doesn't want a guy on the Lakers, that guy won't be on the Lakers. Accordingly, Sean Deveney (an NBA insider for Heavy) reported that James and the Lakers front office have soured on Russell. Damningly, James allegedly “is not Russell’s biggest fan” and may agitate for an upgrade. To wit, Bleacher Report‘s Chris Haynes predicted that Russell won't remain to Los Angeles since he doesn't fit within James' plan for the future.

“I don’t think we’ll see D’Angelo Russell back with the Lakers” Haynes said on his #thisleague UNCUT podcast this week, “LeBron wants to fade more into the role as a secondary scorer and playmaker.”

If (or maybe when) Russell leaves, the Lakers have already begun compiling a list of possible replacements. Namely, the Lakers are expected to pursue Kyrie Irving, the franchise's white whale over the last year and James' former teammate in Cleveland. Outside of Irving's general weirdness and bad taste in movies, he'd be exactly what the Lakers need to win their 18th ring; a James, Davis, Irving trio would instantly the NBA's Biggest Three.

Similarly, the Lakers have also been linked to All-Star point guards like Trae Young and Fred Van Vleet, signaling that they'll leave no stone unturned in pursuit of an upgrade from Russell.