After suffering a fractured tibia in Tuesday’s season opener, Julius Randle is expected to miss the rest of the 2014-15 season. Following Randle’s injury, support flowed in from all across the NBA for the Lakers rookie.
Fellow Lakers
Randle’s Laker teammates reached out to the 19-year-old in postgame interviews and through social media.
Kobe Bryant
“Even for myself, being a veteran, dealing with something like this is tough. Him being a 19-year-old kid, it’s tough. But that’s what we’re here for. We’re here to pick him up and help him through it and take it day-by-day.”
”I think what this franchise has always been good about doing is surrounding the young players with players who have come before. And he has a great cast surrounding him: myself and James Worthy, A.C. Green, Magic (Johnson). We’re all there, so we’ll help him through this, and he’ll come back a better basketball player.”
Jeremy Lin
“Just keep your head up, man. It comes and goes, and you can never really take things for granted. And I’ve been through a lot of ups and downs in my career. Just try to stay positive and know when (you) get healthy, (you’ll) be able to go out and do (your) thing again.
Carlos Boozer
“It was tough, man, but you saw our camaraderie. We all went over there, tried to help him out, give him support.”
Jordan Hill
Jordan Clarkson
Nick Young
Byron Scott
“It’s hard. When you have a young guy like that go down, you’re already thin with the injuries that we have, so it makes it that much harder. But I think the last three or four minutes (of the game) obviously we weren’t thinking a whole lot about basketball. We were really thinking about Julius and just hoping he was OK.”
James Worthy
Across the NBA
Players and teams from around the league, plus Randle’s college coach, took to social media to let the rookie know he’s in their thoughts.
Paul George
Stephen Curry
Jamal Crawford
Eric Gordon
Austin Rivers
Wesley Matthews
Mo Williams
John Calipari