Lonzo Ball showed the essence of what he brings to the Lakers…
There is much to be said about Lonzo Ball and how he does not score as well as D’Aaron Fox or former Lakers point guard D’Angelo Russell. But have you noticed something about those players? Their teams are below .500.
The point here is…Can we let Lonzo Ball play the game and leave him alone?
Lonzo Ball had only five points in this game. But he led everyone in the building with +/- of +24. Lakers fans that happens to be a ton and it’s an amazing stat. He started out slowly looking for his shot, not as aggressive as he was in the Dallas game but he eventually figured out a way to get involved in the offense…
Beauty of a crossover and finish by Zo! #LakeShow (📺: @SpectrumSN & ESPN) pic.twitter.com/8ttHpHIXlj
— Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers) January 10, 2019
Just watch how he crosses over the Pistons defender and takes the ball to the hole. He challenges a bona fide shot blocker in Andre Drummond and scores with the off-hand. Again, aggressiveness is the key component here. Lonzo has missed that same type of lay up numerous times just flipping the ball up quickly, but here he did not worry about the contact from Drummond and finished strong.
Lonzo’s floor game included 11 assists, 5 rebounds, 2 steals and a block on Luke Kennard that actually bounced off of JaVale McGee’s face.
What gets left out of the box score was the defensive presence against the Detroit backcourt. Pistons point guard, Reggie Jackson looked very bad in this game. He was inefficient and struggled to get the Pistons into their offensive sets. This is because of the defensive pressure of the Lakers on the perimeter.
Will he need to score more against better teams? Sure. But tonight, he orchestrated the offense and made sure the ball found the hot hand of Kyle Kuzma.