Ball is frustrated but understands decision
Lonzo Ball didn’t resist the Lakers’ decision Saturday to end his season. He figured it was coming, given how long his left ankle is taking to heal.
“It’s just the situation I’m in right now,” Ball said before Tuesday’s game, speaking for the first time since being sidelined for the season. “So I have no problem with it.”
Ball said he’d be traveling with the team and would also “be around here, do whatever I can off the court to help.”
The initial injury that sidelined Ball during the third quarter of the Jan. 19 game against the Houston Rockets looked and felt so gruesome at first that he and others worried he had broken the ankle.
He hadn’t. That bit of good news was confirmed before the game ended. But it was plenty bad.
How bad, Ball wouldn’t know for weeks. An MRI exam the day after the injury revealed Ball had a Grade 3 ankle sprain, which includes a torn ligament. At the time, the Lakers said the injury would be a four-to-six-week injury. But what has extended his absence even more is a bone bruise in the ankle.
“They said the MRI, the first one, I got it so soon that [the bone bruise] didn’t show up,” Ball said. “Second one, it was there.”
Two weeks after the injury, Ball began running on an underwater treadmill. It was at that point that he realized something wasn’t right.
“I sprained my ankle on the outside, but I kept feeling the pain on the inside,” Ball said. “Right when I started running.”
The injury happened at a particularly frustrating time for Ball, who had been playing well in the games leading up to it.
“I thought it was up and down,” Ball said of his second season. “Trying to find my stride, if you will, the last five games before I got hurt.”
This is the second year Ball has had his season cut short by injury. He sat out 30 games during his rookie season because of knee and shoulder injuries. A summer surgery cut into his offseason. The hope is that this year Ball will finally have a full offseason to work on his game.
“I haven’t had it since I’ve been in the league,” Ball said, “so I think it’ll help me a lot.”
Andre Ingram has fans in Chicago
Near the end of the game in Chicago on Tuesday, fans could be heard longing for one thing.
“Pass it to Andre,” one said.
They’d tried it a little bit earlier. Andre Ingram entered the Lakers’ 16-point victory with 2 minutes 5 seconds to play in the fourth quarter. With 1:15 left, Rajon Rondo passed him the ball and Ingram tried a contested jumper.
“The look I got was clean, it was a great pass from Rondo,” Ingram said, smiling. “I just wish I would’ve knocked it down. I mean, the guys were obviously looking for me. Chicago was obviously aware of it. It was still fun to be out there and be part of it.”
It was the third NBA game the gray-haired 33year-old has played. He was called up at the end of last season and played in two games that thrilled the NBA world. Ingram had spent his entire career toiling in the NBA’s developmental G League.
“The reach shocked me, the reach of it,” said Ingram, whose story is being turned into a movie. “I don’t have social media at all. … I had no idea how far it reached out until my family members who do have those things told me. It was humbling that so many people were that touched by it and have been following me since. It was just overwhelming positivity for it all.”
The Lakers signed Ingram to a 10-day contract Monday. He will be with them throughout a fivegame trip that will go to Toronto on Thursday, Detroit on Friday, New York on Sunday and Milwaukee on Tuesday.
“I think it’s an unbelievable story of just perseverance and just having a goal and having a dream. … He has a great spirit, even with everything he’s been through, and we are happy to have him for as long as we got him,” LeBron James said.
The Lakers surprised Ingram with the news last year and they did it again this year. He was with his South Bay Lakers teammates when he heard. And it felt just as good this time as it did last year.
He got his first opportunity to play when coach Luke Walton put him in the game with 4.3 seconds left in the third quarter. Ingram played 2:09.
“He did his job,” Walton said. “They top-locked him all over the court and they face-guarded him. So, one of the things that we wanted to bring him in for was if we do need him in special situations. Or, tonight we were hitting shots, so we were sticking with the guys making them but if we do need somebody, he creates space out there.”
To Ingram, the minutes don’t matter. He’s 1-0 with the Lakers and that means more.
“Whether it’s four seconds or four minutes, doesn’t matter,” Ingram said. “To be valued means something to me. To be out there on the court means something to me. I’m thankful for every second.”
TONIGHT
AT TORONTO When :5PDT On the air: TV: Spectrum SportsNet, TNT. Radio: 710, 1330 Update: The Lakers listed Lance Stephenson (toe sprain), Tyson Chandler (neck stiffness) and Josh Hart (knee tendinitis) as questionable. Kyle Kuzma is healthy enough that he is off the injury report. Toronto has the second-best record in the Eastern Conference and has won six of its last 10 games.