In an interview with Big Boy on Real 92.3 LA this past summer, Lonzo Ball said he thought the Los Angeles Lakers had as good of a shot as anybody to win the NBA championship before injuries and trade rumors derailed their season.
“I thought we had a good chance, honestly,” Ball said in September. “Looking back on it, we were moving in the right direction and then ‘Bron went down, Rondo went down, I went down, B.I. went down, so it was just like … there was a point we were looking at the stands for people because we ain’t got no bodies.”
Draymond Green, who made the NBA Finals with the Golden State Warriors last season (and the four seasons before that) thinks Ball should have stayed in his lane, to borrow a phrase from LaVar Ball. In a recent interview with ESPN, Green said he thought it was funny that Lonzo was talking about the possibility of winning a championship when the Lakers didn’t even make the playoffs.
“Recently, Lonzo came out and said, like, ‘Yeah, the Lakers: we could have won a championship.’ That’s just something where it’s like, yeah, you’ve got LeBron James — of course you could have won a championship. But you didn’t make the playoffs. You can’t just come out and say that. Like, there’s some things you just got to keep to yourself,” Green said.
To be fair to Lonzo, the Lakers were two games back of the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference before James got hurt against Green’s Golden State Warriors on Christmas Day (and for the record, the Lakers won that game).
That being said, Green is probably right. Not only did the Lakers not make the playoffs, but Lonzo doesn’t even play for Los Angeles anymore. Sure, the Lakers could have made the playoffs, but the only team’s playoff hopes he should be concerned with now are the New Orleans Pelicans’.
The way things are going right now, though, both Green and Ball will be at the NBA Draft Lottery next season.
