Lonzo Ball is something new

The Lakers are embroiled in Good Vibes right now. Kyle Kuzma, smooth as all hell, is climbing atop the rookie ladder. At 8-12, they are not raising any eyebrows — good or bad. In very few moments have they operated like a less-than-respectable unit. Speaking of respectability, head coach Luke Walton is providing a measure of that. For the first time in five years, the Lakers look like a free agent destination. The weather is good. The ball is moving. The guys are happy.

If there ever was a time for the spotlight to skew away from Lonzo Ball’s struggles — ‘struggles’, by the way, that include two triple-doubles — it would be now. But then his father, LaVar Ball, criticized coach Walton for benching his son in the fourth quarter. Right before getting in a spat with President Trump. Which was right after his middle son, LiAngelo, was released from Chinese prison. Lonzo, by the combined measure of the hype, the brand, the family, the media, the city, will never truly be given any cushion. You could say, given Big Baller Brand’s heady dreams of industry disruption, and the tactics his father has chosen as the best way to achieve them, that the ruthless spotlight Lonzo faces every game is merely the cost of doing business.

But it’s also the cost of doing business for anyone who tries to do things differently.

Beyond all the hoopla lies a player who can, above all, be truly unique. He is being given full opportunity to play through his mistakes, and the process will be fascinating to watch. Therein lies the compulsion to want to see him do well: Ball, one can already tell, is incredibly smart. If he can channel that IQ into buckets, he’ll etch out new ways of understanding basketball.

To watch Lonzo now is to bear witness to a tantalizing skeleton. And I’m not just talking about his slender frame. Already, he is creating two or three transition opportunities per game that other players wouldn’t, but he hasn’t quite learned how to suss out when to throw the outlet pass and when it’s judicious to slow things down. He sees every opportunity, but he doesn’t quite know how to capitalize it. He is ruthlessly unselfish. Combine the contours of every possible play and what emerges in an altogether unique lens on the game, cultivated by an entirely unique regimen that started from the moment he picked up the ball.

Playing with pace is a habitualized exercise. One cannot merely pick it up. It has to be ingrained, and it was at Chino Hills High School, where the Ball brothers broke pace records en route to a 35-0 record and a state championship. Ball was never versed in the over-dribbling language of his peers. The second he corralled a rebound, he would catapult it to other side of the floor. He grew up ceding control.

There is something beautiful about this. LaVar, as we know, had a plan in mind from jumpstreet: will his three sons to the NBA. He possessed the foresight, and the resources, yet his kids did not grow up practicing among other up-and-coming NBA prospects in state-of-the-art gyms, crafting their notion of the perfect game.

Hardwood floors were reserved for game-days, where the LaVar-coached Chino Hills team shirked convention in every way. Lonzo grew up practicing in the uneven concrete floors in the backyard his family home, putting up makeshift obstacles like chairs in place of pylons. He worked out by doing pull-ups beside their pool. His conditioning? Running up and down the hills in Chino.

The jumper too. That rickety, infamous jumper, that never left him until he put on a Lakers jersey, was cultivated on an outside hoop. His shot was formed on the asphalt; the shooting machine who doesn’t use a shooting machine.

In college, Ball’s 41 percent clip on 3-pointers, his seemingly expansive range and indiscriminate trigger made him the perfect NBA prospect. Force the defense’s hand, and then exploit them with passing vision reminiscent of Rajon Rondo.

It’s not exactly working out that way. Ball’s jumper has disappeared. He is shooting 25 percent from 3, and he looks uncomfortable seeking out his own shot. Right now, we don’t know if he’s just cold or plain bad. Even if he finds his stroke, there are reasonable concerns about the time it takes Ball to get his shot off. We’ve already seen him get blocked where others wouldn’t.

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One only needs to watch Brandon Ingram slam it home off a screen, or Kyle Kuzma putting on the moves down low, to be reminded of how much easier the game comes for its more conventional players. Lonzo can set them up right now, but life would be much easier if he too was a threat. One wonders: Could the unorthodox lens have existed without the unorthodox education?

Lonzo’s basketball upbringing was exceedingly individualized, even local, in a league that is increasingly filled with guards who are carbon copies of each other, following a slate of expert advice.

In the end, it might damn him. In the end, it might be beautiful.

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