Lakers rookie D’Angelo Russell took a rocketed pass from LeBron James below-the-belt
Los Angeles Lakers rookie guard D’Angelo Russell has been playing quite well as of late, particularly with him getting more opportunities right before the NBA All-Star break. That solid play continued on Wednesday night against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
However, Russell’s night wasn’t all gravy against the Cavs, even more so than his team suffering a loss. In fact, the rookie suffered a fate that no player or man should ever have to deal with at the hands of Cavaliers superstar LeBron James.
Near the end of the third quarter, LeBron drove to the left elbow and looked to fire a pass to the perimeter to Iman Shumpert. The only problem was that Russell happened to be directly between James and Shumpert and LeBron’s pass was rocketed directly into the rookie’s crown jewels:
Getting hit below-the-belt is never a pleasant experience, but the fact that Russell remained conscious after taking a pass from LeBron—a player famous for the zip and speed that he puts on his passes—to the junk is admirable in and of itself.
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Russell predictably had to leave the game a bit to recover for a bit where Byron Scott told him to quit crying and man up. However, the rookie point guard did return to the game and finished out the contest for the Lakers.
Russell was asked about the play after the game too and, if you’re one of many that can’t help but laugh after seeing what happened, he says that’s fine. The rookie told the media that he was fine with people laughing after the fact and that he even watched the video and laughed at it himself.
It’s good that we can all laugh at it now, but we can almost be 100 percent sure that Russell will cover up the next time LeBron is firing a pass when he’s in the area.