When presumptive first-overall pick Karl Towns announced his commitment to Kentucky in December 2012, he did so before a packed auditorium at his high school in Metuchen, New Jersey. Jahlil Okafor’s announcement in 11 months later was broadcasted live on ESPN, as were those of Stanley Johnson, Myles Turner, and a handful of other top prospects.

D’Angelo Russell’s commitment to Ohio State, on the other hand, came without much in the way of fanfare. Ranked between 13th and 30th in the Class of 2014 by most major scouting services, the 6’5” combo guard was expected to be a bit of a project. When he arrived in Columbus, most outlets projected him as a potential late lottery pick in 2016, and few expected him declare in 2015.

It didn’t take long for that change.

In October, about a month and a half after Russell arrived on campus for the start of the fall semester, the team traveled to West Virginia for its first action against an outside opponent, a closed preseason scrimmage.

Russell was remarkable. He scored 33 points and hit the game-winning shot, and Buckeyes head coach Thad Matta realized immediately that he had something special in the freshman guard.

“On the bus ride back, I was talking to my assistant coaches, and I said, ‘Fellas, we better find another guard,’” he recalled in an interview with Sporting News.

Matta knew then that the freshman was likely headed for one-and-done status, but Russell tried to block out the noise and simply focus on the season ahead.

In his debut game on November 14, he dropped 16 points on 7-of-14 shooting to go along six assists, four rebounds, and three steals with just one turnover in a 92-55 win over UMass Lowell. Beyond the stat line, impressive given the fact that he played just 26 minutes in the blowout, he showed off his fantastic basketball IQ, compelling River Hawks head coach Pat Duquette to say of Russell, “He’s as good a freshman as I’ve seen.”

Five days later, he went off for 32 points in 25 minutes while leading Ohio State to a 106-48 thrashing of Sacred Heart. That outing began a 32-game streak of double-digit scoring performances, and by season’s end he had earned consensus First-team All-American honors, the Jerry West Award given to the nation’s top collegiate shooting guard, and a spot in the top five of just about every major outlet’s mock draft.

After taking some time to mull over his options and talking with both his family and with Coach Matta, he declared for the NBA Draft on April 22.

Russell’s freshman year stats immediately jump off the page. In 35 games, he averaged 19.3 points, 5.7 rebounds, and 5.0 assists per game while shooting 44.9% from the floor and 41.1% from beyond the arc. His field-goal percentage was hurt slightly by the high volume of shots he attempted from long range (three-pointers made up 44.9% of his attempts), but among guards who logged as many minutes and scored as many points as he did last season his effective field-goal percentage (54.1%) was better than all but one selected in the lottery since 2010, Weber State’s Damian Lillard (56.2%).

Russell was the only freshman in the nation to post a triple-double last season, notching 23 points, 11 assists, and 11 rebounds with just two turnovers in a 79-60 win over Rutgers on February 2. A few weeks prior, he scored 27 points and pulled down a career-high 14 boards in a 76-67 loss to Iowa. He had just two assists in that game, but when a dish as sweet as the one below doesn’t result in a notch in the box score, you can hardly blame him…

It’s plays like that one that made D’Angelo Russell such a popular figure amongst Sixers fans, many of whom believe the 19-year-old combo guard would fill a need in the team’s backcourt playing off of big men Joel Embiid and Nerlens Noel. And when you look at his poise and maturity in surveying the floor, how he commands double teams, and the way he makes teams pay in pick-and-roll situations, it’s easy to understand why.





When asked at last month’s Draft Combine why he should be selected by a team picking at the top of the draft, Russell simply smirked at the reporter and coolly stated, “Because I’m the best player in this draft.”

Just four years ago, though, he wasn’t even the best guard on his high school team.

After transferring from Central High School in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky to Montverde Academy in Central Florida, a then-sophomore Russell found himself stuck on the second team, toiling alongside Sixers center Joel Embiid, a junior who had just arrived at the school a few months prior from his home nation of Cameroon.

The two quickly formed a bond, and although their paths diverged when Embiid transferred to the nearby Rock School for his senior season, their routes to the NBA have followed a similar trajectory, with both making the jump from high school reserves, to rising recruits, to sensational college freshmen, to the top of most teams’ draft boards by this point in the process.

On Instragram, D’Angelo Russell captions every one of his photos with his one-word slogan, “#Loading…”, suggesting that he’s not done growing, learning, or improving. No matter which team drafts him, he’s looking to prove that his meteoric rise has just begun.