Lakers: Brandon Ingram on Gaining Weight ‘It Gets Sickening’
By Eric Yee
Los Angeles Lakers’ second overall pick, Brandon Ingram is desperately trying to put on weight but according to experts he needs to make sure to do it the right whey way
Just by taking a quick look at Lakers’ rookie, Brandon Ingram it is easy to tell what the knock on him is. He may be able to shoot the lights out, handle the ball like a guard and finish strong at the rim, but 6’9, 190 pounds is not intimidating by any means when it comes to the NBA.
Even drawing the Spongebob meme treatment on Draft Night, Ingram made it known early that his top priority is putting on weight, hoping to add 20 pounds before the start of the regular season. However, now according to a recent piece from ESPN’s Baxter Holmes, experts agree that the process must be approached the correct way in order to avoid harming Ingram in the long run.
Per Holmes, Ingram currently has an alarm set on his iPhone that goes off every “three to four hours” which tell his to eat and according to Ingram, “It gets sickening… but I just try to stick to it.”
Renowned for his work with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, trainer Tim Grover let his expertise on the topic be known,
"That’s how they’re going to fail in the NBA. [Weight gain should be] a slow process. These are basketball players. These aren’t body builders. They move. They perform. They have to perform out there. So they know how their body feels. You can’t just pack all this amount of weight on there and expect them to still be able to have the shooting touch and move the same way"
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More over, Grover sides with the method of gaining weight over time, similar to what Kevin Durant did and continues to do.
"A 2015 story by The Oklahoman noted that Durant weighed 212 as a rookie, 223 by 2009, 231 by 2011 and 237 by 2013, a gain of roughly 25 pounds over his first six NBA seasons — or a little more than four pounds per season."
Compare this to Brandon Ingram trying to gain 20 pounds in four months and you see that the concern is valid. That said, Ingram has since backed down from this initial goal, saying that he doesn’t actually “have a goal right now,” and his coach, Luke Walton and GM, Mitch Kupchak both support him, believing the weight will come, “naturally.”
Kupchak even used his old teammate, Michael Cooper as an example saying,
"Michael competed and was fearless, but he never put on an ounce… Obviously, the kid needs to get stronger, and he will, but the important thing is that [Ingram] is fearless and he competes."
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While it’s not confirmed nor denied whether Tim Grover is working with Ingram, based on his track record, the Duke product should be eating up everything he has to say, instead of the five to six thousand calories some expect him to eat.