Kobe Bryant has said that it is "tough" for Julius Randle to have suffered a broken leg during his first game in the NBA.
The Los Angeles Lakers rookie forward fractured his tibia while lining up a shot late in the fourth quarter in the 108-90 defeat to the Houston Rockets.
The shooting guard told reporters: "Even for myself, being a veteran and dealing with something like this, it's tough. For him being a 19-year-old kid, it's tough. That's what we're here for. We're here to pick him up and take it day by day.
"It's a fluke injury. There's nothing you can do about that. He worked extremely hard, he trained extremely hard. Then something like this happens, so you've kind of got to give yourself up to that and control what you can control, and what happens, happens. And now it's on him to control how he handles this."
The Lakers selected Randle with the seventh overall pick in this year's Draft.
Sian Cowper
