During the first few months of the 2018-2019 NBA season, New Orleans Pelicans player Lonzo Ball played the best basketball of his career but was unable to continue due to a grade three ankle injury.
Ball was struck by the injury bug for both of his seasons in the NBA. He played 52 games his rookie year and played only 47 games last season.
The stats for his rookie season, for many people, did not seem to impress and did not convince anyone that he could be an elite point guard in the NBA. He averaged 10.2 points, 7.2 assists and 6.9 rebounds per game. To compare those numbers, assistant coach Jason Kidd had 11.7 points, 7.7 assists and 5.4 rebounds during his rookie years as a basketball player and is now in the hall of fame for it.
Last season, Ball went down in those three statistical categories but managed to bring up both his overall shooting percentage and his 3-point percentage. In the 47 games that he played, he averaged 9.9 points, 5.4 assists and 5.3 rebounds per game, shooting 41 percent from the field and 33 percent from the 3-point line.
Ball has had to overcome many obstacles, one of them being his father’s mouth. As a former NBA player himself that claimed being better than Michael Jordan, Ball’s father made people expect more from Ball than they would have if the upcoming player had come into the league silently.
Nonetheless, Ball had to prove himself either way. His stats don’t really show the whole picture but Ball had a huge impact on his former team, the L.A. Lakers.
Ball’s potential is out of this world, and he has shown that he has the potential to be an elite, championship-level point guard on several occasions. However, it may take him some time to develop into a player of that high degree.
To start off, Ball has unbelievable court vision. In fact, it is comparable to many of the best passers in NBA history. On top of that, he has great playmaking abilities that are often overshadowed by his lack of assertiveness.
Ball has the ability to make assist his teammates to play better while helping the team’s overall unity. He proved that countless time last season and during his rookie years. Lakers center Javale McGee can attest to that. McGee had the best season of his career, both offensively and defensively, as he put up an average of 12 points, 7.5 rebounds and 2 blocks per game.
Ball doesn’t get much credit for the impact he has on his team. Many people only want to focus on how many points he makes, how many threes he makes and his shooting percentages, which are important, and compare them to veteran point guards. But impact just doesn’t work that way.
Ball needs to work on his offense and get better at scoring and being more efficient during the game. That’s all very clear, but he does have great defensive intangibles. Coming into the league, he was a liability on the defensive end of the floor but has now proved to be one of the top 10 defensive point guards in the league.
During the last season, the Lakers were placed sixth in overall defense with Ball playing before his injury. The 11 games following Jan. 19, 2018 after Ball got hurt against the Houston Rockets caused the Lakers to drop from second place to last in the league defensively.
Many people are still not convinced, and will not be, that these stats from Ball can help him develop into becoming the best player to come out of the 2017 draft to help his team score a championship. But he will have had an entire offseason to work on his game and may come back to prove all of those doubters wrong.
