Alex Caruso quickly became fan-favorite. But it some time for him to get used to all the attention, such as ‘MVP’ chants in away games.
The 26-year-old guard was a guest on The Official Lakers Podcast to talk about a wide range of topics, including the hype surrounding him. He revealed that at first the attention was too much, ‘borderline annoying’.
Via Christian Rivas of Silver Screen and Roll:
“But yeah, it did get to a point to where I was just sitting back and literally anything I did, somebody would tweet about it, or somebody was reporting on it, and at a certain point I was just like, ‘this is just like borderline annoying.’ It was to the point where it’s like, let’s just focus on basketball, and we’re having so much success on the court that I would love for it to be more about that than me doing a random play in a game.”
He clarified that it wasn’t the Lakers fans that made him feel that way:
“It was the energy, it was the little things that I do that kind of go unnoticed, and then at the end of the year have a great game, and that’s when everybody outside of Lakers fans started to notice. It was like ‘oh wow, this guy can do some things, but West Coast games, late night, people they don’t see our actual games, they just see what people put out on social media. The clips, the highlights or whatever. Or the tweet about this random white guy that’s very unassuming looking that plays for the Lakers that they all think it’s just hype, or it’s just because he plays in L.A. with LeBron… It’s not Lakers fans. It’s mainly like outside of the realm of Laker Nation.”
