Lonzo Ball has had plenty of time to think about what went wrong during his more than 1,000-day rehabilitation from a knee injury.
Did they play for hours on a concrete court?
Or is he planning on returning to the NBA's Bulls before he's fully healed?
Perhaps it was a sneaker thrown at him by his attention-hungry father LaVar, who tried to cash in on Lonzo's rising fame with his Big Baller branded sneakers.
Ball, who was drafted No. 2 overall by the Lakers in 2017, isn't ruling anything out, even when it comes to the shoes he was forced to wear during the first NBA Summer League in 2017.
“It was like a kickball shoe,” Ball said. told ESPNHe added that while he and his manager bought several pairs of high-end basketball shoes in Las Vegas to wear while playing for Summer League MVP, he only wore BBB sneakers twice.
In January 2018, Ball experienced a torn meniscus, the first of many knee problems he would encounter, and given the timing of that illness, it's unlikely that it had anything to do with Big Baller-branded shoes. He wonders if there is.
“Honestly, I think it's definitely a possibility,” said Ball, now 27. “I didn't get hurt that much until I started wearing them.”
This isn't the first time he's exposed the LaVar brand to questions and criticism, saying: Josh Hart’s “LightHarted Podcast” (2019) There was a problem with BBB's signature ZO2 sneakers.
“Literally, if I had the shoes from that game, I would explode,” he says.
As Ball revealed, it didn't have to be that way.
“I've been into Adidas since high school, so I knew that would be the way to go,” he told ESPN. “But I don't think what was told to me is what actually happened. I was told that no one wanted to partner with me, and my father said, 'You're just going to shake up the brand.' . And I was like, “Okay.'' ”
