The introduction of the NBA In-Season Tournament was a huge success from a competitive standpoint, with teams taking games in December more seriously than they would have in years past. On that front, the proceedings got heated between the Los Angeles Lakers and Indiana Pacers in the tournament final, with D'Angelo Russell and Bruce Brown jawing at each other early on in what turned out to be a 123-109 win for the Purple and Gold.

In the first quarter, Brown, who's now with the Pacers after a successful 2022-23 stint with the Denver Nuggets that culminated in a championship, found himself in early foul trouble. And Russell let him hear it. The Lakers guard evidently remembered all the banter Brown had for him in last season's Western Conference Finals, and now, he had an opportunity to retaliate with some trash talk of his own, which received a viral transcription treatment.

All that trash talk didn't exactly do wonders for both men, with the two engaging in, what kids these days would call, a mid-off. But even in their battle of mid, there was bound to be a winner, and on the night, that honor belonged to D'Angelo Russell. In addition to winning the inaugural NBA In-Season Tournament with the Lakers, he also had a much better game than Bruce Brown did, dropping 13 points and seven assists against the Pacers guard's four points on 2-9 shooting from the field.

Russell surely felt vindicated with this moment, as he reached arguably the lowest point of his career back in the 2023 Western Conference Finals against the Nuggets, where Brown and company viciously targeted him on switches, playing him off the court in the process. D-Lo even became a meme with all the pre-game shooting he was doing in attempts to redeem himself.

Now that Bruce Brown isn't with the Nuggets, D'Angelo Russell clearly felt that all of the Pacers guard's trash talk had less of a foundation to stand on. Russell mentioned in his postgame interview that Brown no longer has Nikola Jokic to stand alongside with, so things will be different from here on out. And they were, with Russell and the Lakers standing tall as the inaugural winner of the NBA Cup.