Mavs’ Parsons won’t play Saturday night at Houston

Chandler Parsons will get to see some of his old teammates Saturday night when the Dallas Mavericks travel to Houston to take on the Rockets at the Toyota Center.

He will also get to see some of the fans who used to cheer for him when he played for the Rockets from 2011-14. But those fans likely won’t get the chance to boo the player they once adored; Parsons will sit out Saturday night’s game due to rest.

Parsons left Houston in the summer of 2014 to sign a three-year, $46 million contract with the Mavs. In the process, he upset some Rockets fans, who booed him each time he touched the ball when Dallas played in Houston last season.

So what’s changed from last year to this year?

“I’m sure I’ll still get booed on the bench,” Parsons said. “That won’t change. It’s obviously a fun game I look forward to, but it’s not a priority to me right now. My obvious priority is health and getting back.”

Parsons, who is still recovering from off-season knee surgery, will not play on the second night of a back-to-back until he gets in better game condition, and he doesn’t know when that plan will change.

“To be honest, they don’t tell me,” Parsons said of the medical staff. “They just say, ‘Take it game by game and see how it responds.’

“They don’t want to tell me something and it not be able to happen, so I think you’ll see my minutes start going up on a weekly basis. But I can’t see it getting to 30-35 for a little bit.”

Parsons, who played in both halves Friday night for the first time this season, is averaging 4.4 points and 2.8 rebounds in 14.4 minutes per game.

Randle back home

Los Angeles Lakers forward Julius Randle had a surreal moment Friday as he stepped on the court at American Airlines Center.

Randle, who missed almost all of his rookie season after breaking his right tibia, played his high school ball at Plano Prestonwood, and as a kid, he managed to make it to a few Mavericks games.

“Yeah, I’ve come to a million Mavs games when I was a kid, but never played here,” Randle said. “From like sixth grade on, I pretty much came to every Laker game here.”

And Randle didn’t have just any old seat.

“Just me being courtside, watching Kobe [Bryant], Lamar [Odom] and Metta [World Peace] — all those guys going crazy,” Randle said. “Sitting next to Mark Cuban’s wife. It was fun.”

Randle was the seventh pick of the 2014 NBA Draft after playing just one season at Kentucky. He had six points Friday, but was averaging 11.9 points and a team-leading 8.3 rebounds per game entering the game.

“He can really get to the basket,” Lakers coach Byron Scott said. “I like it when he rebounds and he pushes it, because he’s a very good decision-maker as far as passing the ball as well.

“He continues to work on the mid-range game, which he’s going to have to continue to do. But those are two of the things that I really love about him — when he tries to get to that basket and when he’s a playmaker.”

This story was originally published November 13, 2015 at 10:25 PM with the headline "Mavs’ Parsons won’t play Saturday night at Houston."