Lakers: Ben Simmons Has Had a Documentary Crew Filming Him Since High School
By Eric Yee
When players come to the Los Angeles Lakers the question that is normally asked is if they can handle the bright lights of Hollywood, not the other way around
In their 69 year existence, the Los Angeles Lakers have housed more than their fair share of divas and egos. Using Magic Johnson as a jumping off point, the Lakers have shown that they can tame even the biggest of egos (Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal), the wildest of personalities (Ron Artest and Dennis Rodman) and the biggest of divas (Dwight Howard).
That said, the team may be forced to select a player that is more Hollywood than any they’ve known before. When it comes to personalities, the two players primed to go first and second overall couldn’t be any more opposite.
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Brandon Ingram is a no nonsense, team player, who has a quiet yet strong confidence about him; he lets his game do the talking.
Ben Simmons on the other hand is a more flashy and let’s just put this out there, Hollywood and a recent report from Mike Bresnahan of the LA Times directly attests to this.
On Thursday, Bresnahan called into the Access Sportsnet: Lakers and talked Simmons and Ingram, revealing that Simmons has had a documentary crew filming him since high school.
"Simmons, it was like covering Kobe. I get down there, and this is probably late-February, early-March, and the first thing I notice is this kid has a documentary crew following him around. He’s a freshman in college, and he’s had this documentary crew following him for part of his high school career, too. So, I’m like ‘Huh, that’s interesting. A little bit of Hollywood already in him’"
Upon hearing this news, thoughts of Sebastian Telfair‘s ‘Through the Fire’ came rushing to mind.
Ingram on the other hand was the polar opposite.
"He was much more laid back, he talked about how he used to go fishing with his grandma on the coast of Carolina when he was a young kid. He’s more.. he likes doing art. He’s an artist. He likes drawing and sketching and stuff like that. So it’s kind of like going from Hollywood to, you know, exactly where Ingram is from, like a small town in Carolina. Big difference personality wise between those two."
As an avid supporter of everything Kawhi Leonard, I’ve always preferred a player who leads by example and that seems to be exactly who Ingram is.
Using D’Angelo Russell as reference, we know how dangerous it is when a player goes too Hollywood too fast so this could be a red flag in regards to Simmons.
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The Lakers will obviously have to draft whoever is left over come draft day, so hopefully Simmons’ ego doesn’t derail what could and should be an amazing career.