The Los Angeles Lakers are hoping to build their future around rookie point guard Lonzo Ball, who is already transitioning into a leadership role with the team. During the Las Vegas Summer League, Ball was the engine that drove the team and cultivated a pass-first environment, which ultimately led to a Summer League championship.
Ball was so impressive that he took home the MVP award for the tournament despite a rough opening game and sitting out two other games, including the championship, due to injury.
Now, with the 2017-2018 season inching closer, Ball is preparing for the grueling NBA schedule and is developing relationships with his teammates. Known for passing up open looks for himself in order to get teammates easy baskets, Ball will ideally be the kind of unselfish point guard that free agents will want to join.
He is already stepping up for his new Lakers teammates, as he did recently on Twitter when the NBA 2K video game franchise promoted their new 2K18 game with an image of Hawks rookie John Collins dunking on Lakers forward Brandon Ingram:
2k you got 24 hours to change this pic before you lose a customer https://t.co/GVtj0MrzEQ
— Lonzo Ball (@ZO2_) August 12, 2017
It’s always difficult to interpret tone in a tweet, so it’s possible that Ball is being facetious, but taken at face value, it appears that he isn’t thrilled with Ingram being dunked on, even if it’s just a video game version.
While Ball may be the player the Lakers are hoping to build around, Ingram is also considered to be a crucial building block. In his lone performance in Summer League, the lanky Ingram may have proven himself to be the most impressive player of the summer, as we recently discussed on the LN Podcast.
If the duo can find chemistry on the court as well as off, then the Lakers could find themselves back in the playoffs sooner rather than later, and not just in 2K.
UPDATE: 2K responded when Chris Manning, who is a community manager for the NBA 2K (and also the creator of some excellent Lakers videos on YouTube) posted an image of Brandon Ingram dunking on Collins. Lonzo accepted the peace offering.
Fair enough 👌🏽 Still gotta fix the rating tho https://t.co/bEgaNYUvxT
— Lonzo Ball (@ZO2_) August 12, 2017