EL SEGUNDO — Back in December, a batch of positive COVID tests decimated the Los Angeles Lakers’ already ill-constructed roster, leaving the team with little choice but to turn to a handful of replacements, mostly drawn from the franchise’s G League affiliate, the South Bay Lakers.
Along for the ride through one of the more brutal stretches in recent franchise history, undrafted rookie Jay Huff had but one self-imposed rule guiding his experience alongside the celebrated veterans he continues to regard as “legends”:
“Don’t be that guy.”
Although any successful professional basketball player is one who has definitionally ascended to a level of play above the athletic masses, most also have to learn to exist as a small cog within the much larger machine that is any individual franchise, after an entire life of being one of the best and most important players on all of their teams.