NBA player Jordan Clarkson and some of his Lakers teammates voiced support for both Nick Young and D’Angelo Russell amid the leaked video fiasco that exposed Young admitting his alleged unfaithfulness to his fiancée, Iggy Azalea.
Clarkson — Us Weekly revealed he and Kendall Jenner have been secretly hooking up — spoke to the Los Angeles Daily News on Thursday, March 31, about the locker room drama. He said that Russell “looked at us like men” while apologizing to his teammates for secretly recording the clip.
“Everybody accepted his apology,” Clarkson said of the mea culpa delivered by Russell to his teammates on Wednesday, before the Lakers played the Miami Heat. “He has to stop worrying about everything. He just has to perform.”
After the video surfaced this week, ESPN reported that tensions among teammates was “about as bad as it can get. There were trust issues already. Now there’s no trust.”
Clarkson, though, claimed to the Daily News that “nobody is shunning nobody.” He added: “That’s still my teammate and backcourt mate. I’m going to be there for him, too.”
Like Clarkson, Lakers forward Julius Randle was diplomatic about the situation. “Both of these guys have my support,” Randle said. “But I’m not getting into it. That’s their personal situation.”
Russell was greeted by boos inside Staples Center on Wednesday night, which the rookie point guard said he anticipated. “I can’t really show my face without people hating me right now,” he told reporters, adding in a separate interview with The Vertical: “I am sorry about recording the video. I can’t repeat myself enough on that: I am sorry I recorded that video. I feel horrible. I wish this never happened.”
Russell, 20, also said he felt responsible for jeopardizing Young’s engagement to Azalea, 25. (As recalled, the Australian rapper thanked Russell for the video on Twitter.) “Honestly, I do,” Russell said of feeling the burden. “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.”
Young, 30, added to reporters on Wednesday: “I think it’s best me and D’Angelo handle our situation in a private manner. It’s something we need to talk about. What happened is what happened. We’ve got to work on it.”
However, it was a different story on Twitter. “Too much fake … Got me ready to turn up,” Young wrote before quickly deleting the post. “Tattle taling is cool .. I’m done.”
