MINNEAPOLIS — As soon as he knew he would become Kobe Bryant’s teammate, D’Angelo Russell gushed about wanting to learn everything from him. Russell wanted to pick Bryant’s brain about his scoring mentality, his basketball expertise and the keys toward reaching both excellence and longevity.

But a quarter into his rookie season, it turned out Russell accidentally imitated one of Bryant’s negative traits. As he went one-on-one with Lakers player development coach Thomas Scott during morning shootaround on Wednesday, Russell announced he would impersonate Bryant only to air-ball his fadeaway jumper accidentally. But in reality, Bryant has shown plenty of those as he has averaged 16.2 points, while shooting 30.6 percent from the field and 21.9 percent from 3-point range.

Russell did not speak to reporters, but he maintained his joyful personality despite all the negativity around him. Both Russell and Julius Randle will come off the bench for the second consecutive game when the Lakers (3-18) play the Minnesota Timberwolves (8-12) on Wednesday at Target Center. Lakers coach Byron Scott added both Russell and Randle will play around 20 to 25 minutes per game for around the next 10 contests. That marks a steep dropoff from the playing time for both Russell (27.8 minutes) and Randle (28.4).

“They’ve been okay,” Scott said. “They haven’t been moping around or anything like that. It’s a big boys league. Simple as that. You have to come to work every day.”

Yet, it’s plausible Scott has a limited impression of their sentiments. Scott delivered the news about their demotions during a team meeting on Monday and did not talk to them individually about it. Since then, Scott reported that neither Randle nor Russell have talked to him “about getting their roles back or anything like that.”‘

“They accept it for right now,” Scott said. “As I told them when I made the change, where we are right now, we make changes and see what the other guys can do. We have to find lineups that’s going to work as well together.”

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