The Lakers opened training camp on Tuesday morning with their first full practice, and second year point guard Lonzo Ball watched on the sidelines as he continues his comeback from a July 17 left knee scope.
“Zo didn’t do anything,” said Luke Walton. “They only want him practicing once a day. So because a lot of today’s practice was contact, we chose to have him do the other practice.”
The Lakers practiced from around 10 a.m. until just before noon, and after a break, will resume work in the afternoon. We know that Ball won’t be playing any 5-on-5 just yet, and Walton said they’ll ease him into full contact drills.
“We’ll take it one day at a time,” he said. “So he practices tonight. It’s no contact, but we have a lot of running tonight. So we’ll see how he feels tomorrow. As long as he feels fine then he’ll take part in practice tomorrow, and that’ll be contact, and we’ll see how he feels from that the next day and just kind of keep building off of that.”
The good news is that Ball reported feeling confident about how his knee feels, and has been doing various drills as he continues to ramp up his activity.
“Finally got cleared, so I’m feeling good,” he said at media day. “I can finally start playing basketball again. Now it’s all about just getting the strength back and being able to play 5-on-5 without getting hurt.”
Ball originally hurt the knee on Jan. 13 at Dallas, and was out for 15 games before returning on Feb. 23. He then tweaked it once again against the Mavericks on March 28 and missed the final eight games of the season.
Ball said on his family’s Facebook show, “Ball in the Family” that he underwent PRP treatment on the knee after the season ended, but when that didn’t solve his issue, opted to have the knee scoped in July.
While that’s kept him from playing much basketball over the summer, he’s been a constant presence at the facility in both the weight room and the film room.
“This summer was the first time I couldn’t play basketball, so I spent a lot more time in the weight room, a lot more time in the film room,” said Ball. “Just kinda doing everything other than playing basketball to help myself going forward.”
“Even though Lonzo wasn’t able to get on the court a lot, he built those same habits this offseason,” added Walton. “He was in the gym every day, whether that was lifting weights, doing core work, stretching and things like that. The work ethic and habits they’ve created in this short time speaks to who they are, speaks to how seriously they take the game of basketball.”
In related news, since getting back on the court a few weeks ago, Ball’s shot looks more fluid, if not really any different.
“My shot is a lot cleaner now that I think I’m stronger, so I can get it to the rim much easier,” he allowed. “I haven’t really changed it. But it does look a lot better just because I feel like I’m stronger. I don’t gotta fling it. I can kinda shoot it more normal now.”
One thing Ball acknowledged as a bit different from last year is the degree the spotlight shines on him. There’s this game named LeBron in town now.
“He definitely took all the spotlight, so that’s going to be on him,” said Ball. “Now it’s just my job to make his job a lot easier the best ways I can.”
And so, Lonzo is getting closer to being a full go now that he’s been 100 percent medically cleared. But the next step will simply be to see how he responds to what Walton said was “a lot” of running on Tuesday evening.
Stay tuned.