Source: Jesse D. Garrabrant / Getty
With all the criticism surrounding Lonzo Ball and the controversy that comes with having Ball as a last name, Lonzo has remained pretty level-headed. The King seems to agree.
LeBron James recently spoke to ESPN to reveal how he feels about Lonzo Ball and thinks he’s a team player.
“The kid hasn’t said anything,” James said. “It’s been everybody else. So, I love his humility. He goes out, every time someone asks him a question, he says, ‘This is not about me, man. I just want to win. I don’t care about what I did.’ I seen he had a triple-double one game and they lost. He was like, ‘I don’t care. We lost.'”
The moment James is referring to is from last month when the rookie became the youngest player in the NBA to ever record a triple-double, with 17 points, 13 assists and 12 rebounds. But what came as a personal win for Ball didn’t help the team much as the Los Angeles Lakers fell to the Milwaukee Bucks (thanks to the Greek Freak Giannis Antetokounmpo scoring 33 points). When reporters asked Ball about the monumental stat moment, he plainly said, “I really don’t care. We took a loss, so, it doesn’t really mean nothing.”
And, of course, the person who held the record of youngest player to record a triple-double prior to Ball was LeBron James when he was 20 years and 20 days old.
James went on to compare his rookie season to Lonzo’s, citing how being drafted so high puts a ton of pressure on a young athlete to bring change to a struggling franchise.
“I guess when you’re drafted to a franchise, they want you to kind of be the savior. And it takes awhile,” James said.
Ball is only 20 games into his career, and if he can continue to block out the noise and improve his game, he should have a good career—even Kobe said so.
