The Nick Young/D’Angelo Russell scandal isn’t going away anytime soon, but the Lakers are staying in damage-control mode regardless. On Monday, head coach Byron Scott announced that Young will likely be deactivated for the remainder of the season, and he made no bones about the reason why.
Nick Young was deactivated for Sunday's game and probably Lakers' final six games. Said Byron: “Right now he’s not here with us mentally."
— Mike Bresnahan (@Mike_Bresnahan) April 4, 2016
But it bears mentioning that “deactivating” Young is little more than a formality at this point because he hasn’t played in a game since March 8. There have also been clear indications that the Lakers will aggressively try to trade him this summer, which again has little to do with the video-taping saga because he was highly unlikely to factor into the franchise’s future plans to begin with, in no small part due to his sharp decline in productivity over the past two seasons.
Where he goes from here is anybody’s guess. His trade value is virtually nonexistent, and it doesn’t help that the league is quickly moving away from one-dimensional players like himself. So don’t be shocked if you find out Young is no longer in the league next season. It’ll be tempting to point to this embarrassing scandal as the catalyst of that harsh reality, but the truth is that it will have much more to do with how the NBA has evolved in recent years.
