Julius Randle Injury Update: Is Broken Leg Affecting Lakers Rookie's Love Life?
Julius Randle's broken leg may have taken him out of the NBA's basketball court, but his "horizontal game", as TMZ put it, seems to be doing okay.
Sporting the number 69 instead of 30, his jersey number with the LA Lakers, the 20-year-old power forward was chanced upon by a TMZ cameraman strolling around LA's The Grove, with a visible limp.
"It's gotten a lot better," he said of the injury.
When the cameraman said, "I see you got a little limp though, everything else good?" he replied, "Hey I'm good."
"Has the leg enabled you to do anything fun besides play the ball? Like, Do you miss dancing?" the cameraman then asked. "I'm pretty much chill, just hanging out with my family," he said.
Then the million-dollar question: "It hasn't interrupted the love life, has it?" "No, I'm good," he said.
When the cameraman segued to Kobe Bryant's famous "soft like Charmin" remark on his teammates, Randle responded, "I don't take anything personal... We're all trying to do the same thing."
Watch the whole conversation with TMZ here.
ESPN Go said the athlete was shunned to the sidelines for the season after a tibia fracture on his debut game, Oct. 28, last year. The incident took him out of the running for NBA's Rookie of the Year in the 2014-15 season, for which he was a strong contender, said Sports World News.
The injury gave a "premature conclusion" to a promising rookie year for Randle, a seventh overall draft pick, said The Bleacher Report, meanwhile.
"Life can be pretty good, even with a broken leg, if Los Angeles Lakers rookie Julius Randle is to be believed," the Sports World News report said.
The TMZ interview happened before a scheduled operation on a different injury, multiple sources now report. The surgery went well, they add.
According to ESPN Go, the operation was done on a right foot injury that predates the leg break, in fact dating back to the beginning of Randle's senior season in high school. It caused a fall in the 2014 NBA draft, it added.
The fix happened Tuesday morning under Dr. David Thordarson of the Cedars-Sinai Orthopaedic Center, the report said, explaining that it replaced a screw in the fifth metatarsal of his foot.
He is expected to make a full recovery, NBA.com said, as a TMZ commenter noted: "The Lakers stink. He should be more happy he is not playing with the team right now."
"Now that everything ailing Randle has been corrected, he and the Lakers can look forward to the 2015-16 campaign," said The Bleacher Report. "One can only assume that brighter days are ahead for the organization, and Randle promises to be a huge part of their resurgence."