Los Angeles Lakers guard Alex Caruso was faced with the difficult decision to skip his sister’s wedding to stay on the Orlando campus with the team.
Caruso’s older sister Megan’s wedding was scheduled for July 18 and despite multiple factors (NBA restart, coronavirus and 100-plus-person ceremony partly indoors), he wanted to go.
“Megan is as close to my No. 1 fan as anyone could get,” Caruso told ESPN this week.
Caruso noted that he received support to attend the ceremony from Lakers head coach Frank Vogel, vice president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka, LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
“They supported my decision either way,” Caruso said. “They also helped me realize how important I am to what we are trying to do here, now that [Avery Bradley] didn’t make it and [Rajon Rondo] hurt his hand. There is some added responsibility.”
Despite having support to leave, Caruso explained why he ultimately decided to stay with the team.
“If I was on a team that didn’t have title aspirations—a team trying to hold on to the No. 8 seed or something—it might have been different,” he said. “But we have worked too hard.”
After talking to Lakers officials, Caruso would likely have had to quarantine for 10 days upon returning to the “bubble.”
That amount of time missed would have taken him out of scrimmages and maybe even some of the eight “seeding games.”
As for the wedding, Caruso had friends (who he had in common with his sister) record “basically the whole event” and send him the video, which he watched over the weekend in his hotel room when he had some free time.
