Apology Not Accepted: The Nick Young and D'Angelo Russell Saga Continues
Nick Young doesn't want any parts of D'Angelo Russell's apology.
A day after ESPN reported that the Los Angeles Lakers are giving Russell the silent treatment for secretly recording an alleged cheating admission from Young on video, the Lakers' rookie apologized. But Young isn't trying to hear it.
A half hour after Lakers beat writer for the Los Angeles Times, Mike Bresnahan, tweeted that "D'Angelo Russell has apologized to Nick Young, I've been told, and Young has accepted it," Young himself tweeted Wednesday, "What I accept?" before deleting the message.
Can you really blame Swaggy P? His engagement to Iggy Azalea could be in jeopardy due to Russell's hotel recording, which lit up the Internet last week.
Still, that didn't stop Russell from sharing how bad he feels about the whole ordeal before Wednesday's Lakers-Miami Heat game, insisting that he doesn't know how the recording landed on the Internet.
"I feel as sick as possible," Russell said in a news conference, as reported by ESPN. "Been asked 110 times, and my answer and feeling stay same."
He added after getting booed by Lakers fans during the game: "I can't really show my face anywhere without people hating me right now. I don't know. I try to handle it the right way and remember why I'm here, which is to play basketball."
More than anything, Russell regrets recording Young at all, saying he wishes he "could make things better right away but I can't."
"I've always been known as a guy that plays around a lot, and he has been, too," said Russell, 20. "To be around somebody that's similar, with the same similar characteristics, is different. He's one of the guys that I've always talked to about anything, and I cherished our friendship. For me to have an incident like this come up and put it in jeopardy is not what I was intending to do.
"I reached out to [Young], let him know my apologies," Russell continued. "I don't know if they were accepted. I wouldn't blame him."
Young, too, addressed the media Wednesday, although his usual happy-go-lucky self was replaced by a more serious persona.
"I think it's best that me and D'Angelo handle the situation we have in a private manner outside the media," Young said, as reported by ESPN. "I think it's something we really do need to sit down and talk about. That's about it. What happened is what happened. We've got to work on it."
Their friendship has to be at the point of no return, though. D'Angelo violated Swaggy P in the worst way possible. Forget breaking the guy code... to record an alleged cheating admission and then for it to land on the Internet is inexcusable and arguably unforgivable.
Russell is going to have to fight hard to ever be trusted in an NBA locker room again.
In the infamous video, Russell asks Young in a hotel room, "You was 30 and she was 19?"
"Yeah," Young responds.
"Oh, hell naw," Russell says.
Messy.
Crazy that this is currently overshadowing Kobe Bryant's final few games.
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(Photos: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)