Many were upset in the Los Angeles Lakers’ locker room Sunday evening, after the Green Bay Packers’ last-second playoff win knocked the Dallas Cowboys out of the playoffs. (As the woman to whom I’m related by marriage is from Wisconsin, I had a different reaction.) Among the young Lakers, Brandon Ingram’s reaction was more muted. It almost always is.
The 19-year-old is uber-soft-spoken, a far contrast from the fellow who used to have the locker in which Ingram now dresses — Kobe “Bean” Bryant. The assignment was not happenstance. As the second pick in the 2016 Draft, the expectations for Ingram to speed up the Lakers’ restoration to NBA royalty are high. But he’s not a magician; L.A. is 16-30 after a promising start, falling by the wayside in the Western Conference as the calendar clubs the spark and the juice out of the team’s young core. Other than a handful of starts, Ingram has come off the bench most of the season, as the team gradually builds up his rail-thin frame to handle bigger minutes in the future.
He isn’t asked to score; rather, first-year Coach Luke Walton wants him to be a facilitator with the second unit. It’s tough with high-volume shooters like Lou Williams, but it’s part of Ingram’s learning curve. “He continues to make the right play,” says former NBA star and current Raptors 905 Coach Jerry Stackhouse, who coached Ingram when he was in the seventh grade in North Carolina. So far, Ingram’s averages are a little pedestrian (8.1 points, 4.1 rebounds, and a ghastly 29 percent on 3-pointers, which is the one thing most thought he’d be able to do quickly in the pros after showing impressive range in his one year in college at Duke). But the numbers aren’t the point; playing is.
Even though Ingram doesn’t start, Walton’s playing him down the stretch, as he did Sunday night against Detroit. Ingram guarded Tobias Harris for most of crunch time, using his condor-like length to contest Harris’s initial catch in the corner, leave him to meet Andre Drummond rolling to the hoop yet still be able to close hard on Harris in just a couple of steps when Harris bobbled Drummond’s pass. It’s all part of the stew of experience that the Lakers lack.
“We love that he can guard multiple positions,” Walton said. “We love that he can get in and rebound in the paint with people down there. His length, we can play him on point guards. We can switch the defense with him. It’s good for him to go to the free throw line, even though he went 1 for 3 tonight when he got fouled on that three. It’s good for him to go through that. I think that motivates players that want to be great, and Brandon wants to be great.”
Because he’s skinny, there have been any number of comparisons with Kevin Durant, but the only thing that’s similar between Durant and Ingram as young pros is that Lakers assistant coach Brian Keefe was in OKC to help challenge and develop KD, too. Ingram’s not KD and he’s not Kobe, but the anticipation for what he will become teases and tantalizes everyone in Forum Blue and Gold.
Me: There is such hype attached to high Lottery picks. How do you avoid getting overwhelmed by everything that everyone’s throwing at you?
Brandon Ingram: Just by staying grounded, having good people around me to give me good advice just to stay grounded. Work hard, work away from the game, work when no one’s looking, and just knowing that it’s a process. Everything will come at the right time.
Me: Are you trying not to be about that L.A. life? ‘Cause it can swallow you whole.
BI: Absolutely. That comes from having good people around me, keeps me in the right spots, keeps me on the task at hand. So, of course, just staying in the areas where I need to be, and just knowing it’s a reason that I’m here and a reason that I got here, and just keep doing the things that got me here.
Me: When you’re on the bench and the game starts, what are you paying attention to?
BI: How the game’s going. If the pace needs to be pushed, and we’re playing slow basketball, just try to envision myself on the court and just see how the pace is going. Getting my energy going, getting my defensive end going, and knowing that the offense end will come, too.
Of course, I want to be out there and I want to do those things, but of course it’s a process. I know just from learning from other guys on my team and other guys on other teams that it’s going to be helpful.
Los Angeles Lakers forward Brandon Ingram
Me: When you’ve been used to taking care of whatever needed to be done on a court — we need a basket? I’ll get it; we need a stop? I’ll make it — how do you adjust when those things aren’t so easy anymore?
BI: It’s different, of course. Just watching and sitting. But of course I’m learning. The development’s coming on pretty fast and learning how to do different things like that, just watching other people and seeing how they compose themselves, how they close out games. And on the defensive end, how they make stops. Of course, I want to be out there and I want to do those things, but of course it’s a process. I know just from learning from other guys on my team and other guys on other teams that it’s going to be helpful.
Me: What was your reaction when Luke said he wanted you coming off the bench?
BI: It’s not difficult for me. I’ll do whatever the coach wants me to do. They just drafted me; they see something in me. So it’s important for me to come to practice every day and just work as hard as I can, and do whatever the coach asks me to do even more. I think he wanted to see my reaction and my response to that, and of course I wanted to show him my good character.
Me: I know you’re okay with it, but a lot of times, a player hears from his family and friends — ‘why aren’t you playing more? Why aren’t you starting?’ How do you tell them ‘chill, I’m good; I got this?’
BI: Just by showing them the development. Just listening to the coach. I think everybody around me knows that he wants to develop me, and how Coach Luke responds to things. So I think just by telling them that everything’s going to be all right. They drafted me for a reason. Of course, something good is going to come out of it. You have the GM trusting the coach, so we’re going to go with whatever Coach says.
Me: Has Coach [Brian] Keefe shared anything with you about the times when he was with KD when he was just getting into the league?
BI: Absolutely. I think the work with him every day is just helping me come a long, long ways. Just bringing confidence, comfortability on the court. These last few games, I’ve been able to just be comfortable on the floor and play my game.
Me: Do you feel it coming?
BI: Absolutely. I think it’s the comfort, pushing the pace and listening to those guys, just listening and you go back and think about it. It’s all mental. When you put it in perspective and you look at the court and you think about what they’re saying, it all comes a lot easier to you. Of course, I just sat down and listened to it, took it into my mentality, and it’s slowing down for me.
Me: Stack told me he thought it would be around Christmas before your head started clearing. Is that about the timetable?
BI: That’s definitely right. I just started getting comfortable. The confidence started building. Just repetition. I had a low field goal percentage coming into this month. Repetition, practicing, the extra work that I did, it’s helped out a lot
Me: What is the long term plan for body development? I understand that it’s not about how much you weigh as much as how strong you are.
BI: I’m just getting stronger every single day. We’re doing it every single day, but this summer is going to be a big push. Of course as the seasons go on, every summer is going to be a big push. I find myself getting stronger and stronger each and every day. It’s been good for me so far. I don’t think it’s about maybe getting bigger than stronger. It’s just the adjustment of taking those bumps. That’s the adjustment in this league.
Me: Is it almost a good thing that because there are so many young guys on the roster, you can grow together under the radar?
BI: I think you see that’s how a lot of teams start off, with a lot of young guys trying to mesh together, and battle against each other. And us going through these growing pains, it’s going to help us a lot as these months and these years go on.
Me: Is there an “L.A.” thing you want to do that you haven’t done yet?
BI: That I want to do? I guess, take my family to DisneyWorld, maybe. That’s probably it. Is it DisneyLand or DisneyWorld out here?
Me: It’s DisneyLand.
BI: Right, right.
Me: Have you heard from the guy whose locker this used to be?
BI: Actually, I was supposed to reach out to him last week or this week. Just trying to pick his brain a little bit about things, his mentality, of course, and his workout mentality going into games. Just battling against himself and developing his confidence in the league. I haven’t reached out to him, but I plan to.
TWEET OF THE WEEK
In a very cozy and private ceremony, today we retired @MattBonner_SAS 's flannel shirt. #ThankYou15 pic.twitter.com/BXW8NyZC0R
— Manu Ginobili (@manuginobili) January 13, 2017
— Manu Ginobili (@manuginobili), Thursday, 11:11 p.m., bringing closure to a generation of Spurs fans who loved the Red Rocket.
THEY SAID IT
“I think I’m changing the game. In that sense, I’m what Steph Curry is to basketball. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t necessarily think Steph Curry is the best basketball player, but he changed the game so he’s going to always go down as being remembered. Now, everyone wants to shoot the three and shoot it from deep.”
— Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell, in a Bleacher Report piece before Pittsburgh’s playoff game with Kansas City Sunday.
“So, I might have been a little gassed, and I was like, you know what, I gotta get out there. But I was going to contest high, and my legs said no. And, uh, I just gave him like, you know the field goal kicker when you dive past him?”
— Wizards forward Jason Smith, explaining as best he could to CSN Mid-Atlantic how he, um, defended the Bulls’ Bobby Portis during last Tuesday’s game.
“You don’t boo a guy like that. You’re not turning down money like that. None of them people that are booing are turning down that money, so he went to a situation he thought may be a little better. Like I said, a guy like that, with that type of character, you can’t boo him. That’s disrespectful.”
— Celtics guard Isaiah Thomas, after Hawks fans showered Al Horford with boos in his first game back in Atlanta since signing with Boston last summer as a free agent. Horford turned to the Celtics after the Hawks had offered him less than a max contract to stay; he then opted to go to Boston for $113 million over four years.
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Longtime NBA reporter, columnist and Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer David Aldridge is an analyst for TNT. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.
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