TORONTO — The play was set in motion more than an hour before tip off Friday night in Canada, Lakers guards D’Angelo Russell and Max Christie strategizing on one side of the team’s locker room as they got ready for the Raptors.
Through the first two weeks of the season, Christie had struggled.
“I’m just playing robotically,” he told people.
In his third season, now with a real role as the first player consistently off the bench, a lot of the momentum he had built over the summer and preseason was slipping away under a pile of missed shots and defensive uncertainty.