featured-image

Practice Report: Russell “Probable” For Hornets

After a rare road off day that featured a team movie – since Denzel takes care of the Lakers, they had to take care of him – the Lakers gathered for a Monday afternoon practice in Charlotte to try and stay sharp ahead of Tuesday’s game against the Hornets.

Head coach Luke Walton was pleased with the play of his point guard D’Angelo Russell, who missed Saturday’s game in Cleveland to rest a sore knee.

“He was great today,” said Walton. “He came in and worked out yesterday, just a 1-on-0 workout, went hard. And today he was up pressuring the ball (on defense), pushing it on offense … he looked really good.”

Russell is officially listed as “probable” to start Tuesday’s game.

Walton’s hopeful that the knee won’t continue to trouble Russell as the season goes on, and that he’s in the starting line up every day, but he can’t predict the future.

“Hopefully it doesn’t turn into this type of thing where he misses a game, plays a game, misses a game,” he said. "We need to get that continuity with our players, so hopefully that’s not the case.

“Obviously we’ll see how the knee feels. He’s not going to play if it’s killing him … We’ll keep a close eye on it over the week or so and see how it’s playing out.”

BLACK ALSO PROBABLE DESPITE ANKLE TWEAK

Tarik Black hasn’t been able to play much of late due to an injury of his own, a sprained ankle suffered against Utah on Dec. 5. He got in for three minutes at Philadelphia, but did not play at Cleveland, and has now missed six of the last seven games entirely.

Black sat out the second half of practice due to the same ankle.

“His ankle was hurting him, so that’s unfortunate, but hopefully it wasn’t too major of a setback,” said Walton.

Black is also listed as probable, while Jose Calderon is the one Laker who’s out for sure due to a hamstring strain suffered at Memphis on Dec. 3.

INGRAM JUST MISSES HISTORIC TRIPLE-DOUBLE

With his nine points, nine assists and 10 rebounds at Cleveland, Brandon Ingram just missed becoming the youngest player in NBA history to record a triple-double. He would have done so against the guy that actually holds the mark, LeBron James. LBJ went got his TD done when he was 20 years and 20 days old in 2005. Ingram, who’s 19 years and 108 days old, can claim LeBron’s mark if he notches a triple-double at any point of this regular season.

Ingram’s looking forward to Tuesday’s game, the first in his home state of North Carolina, as he expects something like 100 people to make the trek from his hometown of Kinston, around a four-hour drive away. He’ll certainly hear their roar, though it won’t come cheap!