The 37-year-old, who first made his debut way back in 1996, has announced that this will be his final season in the National Basketball Association.
Advertisement
The Toronto Raptors play host to the struggling Los Angeles Lakers tonight at the Air Canada Center.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope scored 22 points, Andre Drummond added 18 points and 15 rebounds, and the Pistons beat the Los Angeles Lakers 111-91 Sunday. “We got crushed when Andre was out there”.
Ross started in place of injured forward DeMarre Carroll. “Unsafe habits we have”, said Casey.
This is a minor setback to Randle’s strong start to his first full season in the league averaging 11.7 points and 9.2 rebounds after missing all but one game past year due to a broken right leg. He has also been playing better as of late with four double-doubles in the last five games including career-high 19 rebounds against the team’s win 108-102 win over the Washington Wizards.
The night featured a video tribute to Bryant during a timeout that brought fans to their feet in a standing ovation.
“It felt absolutely wonderful”.
Monday was Bryant’s final regular-season game in Toronto.
Randle scored 15 points off the bench.
One emerging star is the Pistons’ Andre Drummond, who has the personality and social media awareness to become one of the more popular players in the league.
There were also questions about one of the Lakers’ older players, specifically Kobe Bryant. “It’s a little bit of everything just to see him walking away from the game, especially someone I idolized as I grew up watching”. And I think the answer is always the same: You’ll always take a guy that plays hard and competes.
“I’ve been there before when you are not playing that much and the team is losing a lot”, he said.
Both Russell and Randle are expected to be heavily involved in the post-Bryant era of the Lakers and if benching them now helps that happen, the Lakers will not hesitate with the move.
“That man played at the highest level of basketball for (20) years, you’ve got to give him credit no matter how he goes out”, DeRozan said. One remembers that the Lakers are still the Lakers, electing to bench D’Angelo Russell and Julius Randle for reasons unknown to persons other than blind shadow-tank accomplice Byron Scott, and that even in the best of times, Kobe is still trying to figure out the age thing.
The interesting thing about Russell moving to the second unit was what the rookie himself said after the game: There’s just more ball movement. “I came out there to destroy you”, he said. “I thought the biggest difference in the game was the (15) turnovers, it seemed like every time we turned it over they got a layup”. Bismack Biyombo leads in steals with 1.1 per game.
Advertisement
The game received a charge with 8:58 remaining when Lakers guard Nick Young shoved Anthony Tolliver, who fouled him while Young drove to the basket.
