This Video Recorded By A Teammate Suggests Nick Young Cheated On Iggy Azalea
Kobe is too old to deal with Nick Young and D'Angelo Russell's shenanigans, but here he is.
In a Lakers season supposed to be all about the 37-year-old's last year in the NBA, personal relationships between players have begun to steal the spotlight. The product is an episode loosely connected to pop star Iggy Azalea, and it also seemingly resulted in one player getting ostracized by his teammates.
One source told ESPN's Baxter Holmes and Marc Stein,
Right now, they're handling it by isolating him.
That "him" is rookie D'Angelo Russell who, according to both ESPN.com and the Los Angeles Times, is being shunned by teammates after secretly recording a conversation with Young, who is engaged to Azalea, about other women.
The Los Angeles Times' report says footage of the conversation was obtained by the gossip site Fameolous. In the LA Times report, the description of the videos, which surfaced on social media last week, seem to show dead matches for Russell and Young.
In one video, the man we're led to believe is Young references a 19-year-old woman he seemingly met during the past summer.
In the other, Amber Rose's name comes up, yielding a response of, "Nah, she knows my girl."
At the time the videos surfaced, it wasn't clear if the footage was credible.
But now that journalists who follow the team got on the case, the suggestion seems clear: A teammate filmed a fellow player talking about other women, and said player happens to have a famous fiancée.
And while that suggestion might not be surprising to some, it seems clear the whole situation is having a real effect on team chemistry.
A source told ESPN's Ramona Shelburne,
It's bad, it's about as bad as it can get. There were trust issues already. Now there's no trust.
ESPN was also informed by sources that the relationship between between Russell and other players has suffered, which reportedly led to Russell having to sit alone at a recent team breakfast.
Another anecdote included in ESPN's report described an alleged situation in which another teammate, Lou Williams, immediately got up when Russell tried to sit next to him in the locker room.
And while the video seems old -- the Los Angeles Times says it was recorded months ago -- it certainly seems to have produced new effects in the Lakers's locker room and Nick Young's home.
The Lakers play the Miami Heat at home on Wednesday night.