LOS ANGELES
At first Julius Randle and D’Angelo Russell were mad that they had been benched, upset their starting jobs had been taken from them.
The Lakers’ young players initially tried to show Coach Byron Scott had made a mistake by sitting them at the start of games and that didn’t work altogether well. Russell scored just nine points in his first attempt off the bench in a loss to Toroto, while Randle had a respectable 15 points and 11 rebounds.
“We were out there just playing (trying to earn starting job again), but (we figured out that) it’s bigger than that,” Russell said.