The Brooklyn Nets had trouble attracting fans to watch their games last season, as they had the third-worst attendance in 2016-17 per ESPN. And it’s not just because they have a bland brand of basketball played by a cluster of scrubs. It also has something to do with the fact that the Nets have been so bad even their own fans detest the entire team.

Newcomer D’Angelo Russell wants opponents to adapt the same mentality towards Brooklyn. He tells Anthony Puccio of NetsDaily.com that he wants opponents to disrespect Brooklyn just as they did last season, when teams routinely treat Nets games as a mere opportunity for them to rest their key players.

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“I want teams to hate us,” Russell said at the Nets Inaugural Basketball Camp at Battery Park City. “We’ve struggled over the last few years in Brooklyn. Teams are used to coming in and taking nights off. I just want to rebuild that and make it a place where people come and say, ‘alright we got the crowd against us. It’s New York.’”

This is probably good news for the Nets’ management — seeing a young star like Russell find his own motivation to will his team into being better moving forward.

D'Angelo Russell played two seasons for the Los Angeles Lakers before the Lakers traded him to the Nets along with Timofey Mozgov for Brook Lopez and a 2017 first-round pick that became Kyle Kuzma. Russell certainly did not like how the Lakers easily gave up on him over such a short period of time, so motivation won’t be a problem for the former Ohio State Buckeye whenever the Nets and the Lakers meet for a game this season.