Kobe Bryant dunked last night. No, seriously, it happened, we even wrote about it. The dunk excited everyone, even the Rockets, but D’Angelo Russell may have gotten a bit too excited.
To celebrate Kobe’s dunk, Russell ran along the baseline, which meant he stepped on the court during play, breaking one of the NBA’s cardinal rules: Never leave the bench. Per Robert Morales of the Los Angeles Daily News:
“I think I got a tech,” he said. “I took off and ran across the baseline. I tried to get back before the refs see me. I caught Denzel Washington’s attention and I was like, I don’t know what I did. The ref caught me. How much am I going to get fined?”
Russell did indeed get a technical foul, and his pocketbook will now be $2,000 lighter. Or will it? Apparently, Russell thinks Kobe should pay for the fine, since it came at his expense.
“It was awesome,” Bryant said. “It’s the best tech D’Angelo will ever get.”
Bryant was laughing.
“He said, ‘Hey, man, you’ve got to pay my tech on that one,’ “ Bryant said. “I said, ‘Ah, you ran the baseline of your own free will.’ (Rockets) Trevor (Ariza) and James (Harden) and those guys were pretty funny, too. They had a good time with it.”
The only thing that would be more shocking than Kobe paying Russell’s fine would be him unleashing another dunk like the one that got Russell so excited. Kobe seems like the type to let rookies learn the hard way, rather than the easy way out. Let this be a lesson to the young point guard: No matter how excited you may get for a dunk, you can’t step on the court. Or, at least, you can’t get caught if you do.
