INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Kobe Sanders found out just before gametime that he’d starting for the Los Angeles Clippers against Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors.
With James Harden a late scratch because of shoulder stiffness, it would be up to Sanders and fellow guard Kris Dunn to contain Curry.
It wasn’t his first start of the season, but he made it his best one yet.
Sanders scored a career-high 20 points and had seven rebounds (all defensive) in 36 minutes of a 103-102 victory.
“I knew nothing about him,” Snoop Dogg admitted to Clippers star Kawhi Leonard in a postgame interview on the Peacock streaming service.
Now, the rapper and a whole of others know the 23-year-old.
Sanders was a second-round pick out of Nevada last year by the New York Knicks, who traded him to the Clippers. He spent four years at Cal Poly, where he was a 1,000-point scorer, before transferring to Nevada and earning All-Mountain West honors while playing a fifth year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Although I’m a rook, I’ve played a lot of basketball in my life,” said Sanders, who is from Spring Valley, California, an unincorporated town east of San Diego. “Just playing basketball for such a long time, you pick up IQ, you pick up just little things here and there.”
And no, he isn’t named after the late Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant. Sanders’ parents named him for Kobe Japanese Steak House near Palm Springs, California, their favorite getaway spot.
Sanders knew he was going to play a lot of minutes with Harden out, so he wasn’t nervous about getting yanked if he made a mistake.
“I think I felt that freedom most of the season,” he said. “They instill a lot of confidence in me, telling me to be aggressive, telling me to keep going.”
Leonard is among those in Sanders’ ear.
“I always tell him to keep being aggressive in the game,” Leonard told Snoop Dogg. “That’s your time to get better right there so don’t shy away from it, just keep executing.”
Curry fouled out late for the first time since 2021 after scoring 27 points, and Sanders said he felt “a little bit of relief.”
The Clippers have struggled with a slew of injuries this season and have a 13-22 record. But they’re 7-3 in their last 10 games, having recently won six in a row.
“With James being down, we had 20 turnovers, but we didn’t have a lot extra ballhandling on the floor, so for him to carry that load, I thought was really good,” coach Tyronn Lue said, ticking off some of Sanders’ attributes. “His poise, his ability to understand what we’re doing defensively and offensively, and just getting more and more confident.”
Teammate John Collins described Sanders’ performance as “big time.”
“He’s had a rough intro to the league, playing, not playing,” he said. “Having this start probably shocked him a little bit, but he did exactly what we all expected him to do and proud of him.”
The Clippers are known for rarely playing rookies, but that doesn’t dissuade Sanders.
“You learn a new thing every game,” he said. “The NBA is consistency and opportunity. I was blessed with the opportunity and I’m just trying to stay consistent.”
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