NBA Draft Retrospective: Lonzo Ball

Not exactly Steph Curry with a 40 inch vertical.

The 2017 draft was hyped and is notable for drawing far more attention for its second best prospect than the consensus first, Markelle Fultz. At the time, Fultz was considered a superior shooter, slasher, and defender - and if not for neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome - a serious injury, not just the yips, as many people believe, he likely would have turned out to be an all-star caliber player. But I’m not here to talk about Fultz. Fultz is interesting, but Lonzo Ball was a phenomenon entering the NBA draft that year, both culturally and on the court. I want to jump into what made Lonzo such an interesting draft prospect that year. I want to talk about a couple of things:

• Did Lonzo Ball live up to the hype? (Spoiler alert: No)

• What did pundits hit or miss on?

• Is Lonzo Ball a bust? (Spoiler alert: Hell no)

Did Lonzo Ball live up to the hype?

I’ll start with a clear no. But the hype machine for Ball was super high - he was one of the most famous draft prospects of the century, and when you have a dad claiming that you’re better than Steph Curry(coming off a unanimous MVP season), you’re bound to turn some heads. But that’s the thing with the draft. Expectations of “this player is going to bring back Showtime in his rookie year” can stifle a player’s development. Any draft-head that tells you otherwise is lying - or isn’t considering all aspects of the NBA as entertainment. Expectations can lead to confidence issues, especially when you’re playing for the Lakers. Teams should have been more cognizant of that prior to drafting Ball. That year, I had Ball as the second best prospect(unfortunately, I was on Josh Jackson express that year).

Lonzo didn’t have a poor rookie season, even if it felt like that. He was the youngest player to drop a triple double(although it feels like a new rookie does that every year), and he did have a positive impact on the team as a transition-offense initiator - just as he was projected to be.

Lonzo not living up to the hype is not ultimately relevant to my goal as a draft person, so I will try to steer clear of this talking point when discussing his evaluation.

What did I miss about Lonzo Ball?

Being a relatively impressionable 8th grader at the time, I wanted to believe in Ball’s starpower - so much so that it made me overlook some of his more glaring flaws. He wasn’t aggressive to the basket - the game is basketball and not football(which I suspect Lonzo would have had even more success playing) - and in the half-court his game severely struggled. Lonzo’s retrospective draft profile is an interesting highlight of what gravity means for basketball players. A player can be great, even elite, at all facets of the game, but without aggressive driving or proficient shooting, they’re severely limited in their upside.

Everything we assumed about Ball translated - he was a tremendous passer, eventually a good shooter, and a great defender - but some of the things we saw in plain sight just didn’t bother us as much 7 years ago. A member of the draft community who I follow posted on his 2017 Big Board about how Ball didn’t attempt mid-range jumpshots because he valued efficiency above all else, and we should choose to see that as part of his basketball genius and not as some flaw. Ball did become an elite role-player but that’s the ceiling of what you can be without any of that self-creation.

Really, my misevaluation of Lonzo came from a wrong philosophy on basketball I had when I was younger. I basically believed in some form of a ‘sum of their parts’ methodology to evaluating draft prospects. “Lonzo boasted elite shooting, elite defense, elite passing, why let his lack of consistent slashing or midranges stop me from valuing that?” The way I see basketball now is different - there needs to be a draw in order to create advantages, and without that draw, a player’s ability to capitalize on advantages is not well-utilized. It’s the same reason I valued Paolo over Jabari Smith Jr. a few years ago. One is a self-creator who can learn to capitalize on his self-creation, while the other would have to learn to be a self-creator and the right ways to build on top of that prospective self-creation. It seems like a better bet to go with the self-creator in that regard.

What are my takeaways from Lonzo’s career?

It feels sad to write this, but Lonzo’s NBA career is effectively over. Barring any remarkable comeback, it is fair to evaluate his career against expectations but also just as a player. Lonzo turned into a fantastic player before his injury - one of the best on-ball defenders in the NBA along with a 40% shooter from deep and a transition offense quarterback - he was a terror on the court for opposing guards and bigs with his ability to capitalize on his team’s advantages. However, Lonzo never became the point guard we thought he would be because of his upside was severely limited by his aggression and lack of shooting early in his career. I do think Lonzo Ball would have been an all-star in his career, but that is still a far cry from the Jason Kidd I linked onto him when he was at UCLA. Lonzo was a prospect I really liked. A draft scout that I really respect, Adam Spinella talked on his youtube channel about his misevaluation of Mo Bamba a few years ago. Sometimes you just want to believe in what a player could become and what that would mean for the NBA. That’s what I did for Lonzo.

I hope you all liked this retrospective. It’s part of a series I will be doing on my favorite prospects that I’ve evaluated in the last 8 years or so. If you have any players you would like me to evaluate, I’d love suggestions. Either way, I appreciate the support! Thanks.