Russell to Kobe after celebration: ‘You’ve got to pay my tech’
After 37-year-old Kobe Bryant threw down his first dunk of the season on Thursday night, rookie D’Angelo Russell drew a technical foul for celebrating. He’d like Bryant to pay his fine.
First of all, Bryant’s dunk was tight and probably spawned one billion cliché turn-back-the-clock comments. Russell, who is 19 and definitely geeked to be teammates with the retiring NBA great, then sprinted up and down the baseline in excitement and got the first tech of his career. He will probably remember it.
Russell didn’t realize he was going to get fined until after the game, though, and decided to make his case for Kobe to pay it for him. Because it was totally Kobe’s fault that he got so excited. Because, you know, millennials.
“I like took off and ran across the baseline, tried to get back before the ref saw me and, uh, I caught Denzel's attention and the ref caught me and I don't know what we did,” Russell said, according to ESPN. You can’t see much of him celebrating in the video below, but enjoy the dunk.
Kobe later called it “the best tech D’Angelo will ever get.” Russell came up with a new solution.
“I told him that the next time he does something exciting, I'm just going to do this,” Russell said, according to ESPN, while holding up two fingers. “You got two years left in you if you do something like that.”
- Jeremy Woo
