Lonzo Ball hasn’t played a full five-on-five game of basketball since January and considering the Lakers haven’t provided an update on his status since March, he’ll likely be limited to what he can do on the court for a little while longer.
However, that doesn’t mean Ball is just sitting around and waiting to be healthy again. According to JaVale McGee, Ball has been in the gym every day trying to work his way back to full strength (via FS1’s “The Herd”):
When people get injured they tend to go down in spirit but he’s had a great spirit this whole time he’s been injured. He’s been there every day working in the weight room, and this is coming from behind-the-scenes that sees it all. He’s training. He hasn’t missed a training session. You get fined for things like that and people are really paying attention to that, but he hasn’t missed any of that since I’ve been there, so it’s not like he’s not trying to get healthy. He just had a bad injury and it’s been lingering. That’s all it is.
Ball appeared in just 47 games for the Lakers last season, which was five games fewer than the 52 games he played during his injury-riddled rookie season. Ball has the potential to be an elite two-way point guard in the NBA, but the amount of time he’s missed in both the offseason and regular season has hurt him in his young career.
Hopefully a relatively healthy summer will what Ball needs to have a bounce-back junior season with the Lakers.
You can watch McGee’s full interview on “The Herd” below.
