ONE of those jaded deadbeats passing for an East Coast reporter welcomed Lonzo Ball to New York on Wednesday afternoon by asking him to share his “worst nightmare” on the eve of being drafted into the National Basketball Association (NBA).
Ball, seemingly the personality opposite of his blabbermouth father, LaVar Ball, was bewildered by the question.
“I really don’t have one,” he said in a voice best described as subdued.
That could be because Ball, a 6-foot-6 point guard whose playing style has been compared to Jason Kidd’s, is expected to be taken with the second pick on Thursday night by Magic Johnson and the Los Angeles Lakers, Ball’s hometown team of choice.
Nothing is certain, but barring an unforeseen, unfortunate turn of events, Ball has little chance of falling to the No. 8 pick and into the clutches of Phil Jackson, the president of Team Triangle, also known as the New York Knicks.
For any proud, creative point guard, that would qualify as a worst nightmare. As Derrick Rose has claimed, working in the triangle offense means passing the ball and running off to stand in the corner—surely an exaggeration, but how far off from reality is an unhappy point guard’s perception?
Ball, 19, was in middle school in Southern California seven years ago when Jackson, then with the Lakers, claimed the 11th and last of his coaching championship rings. At the time, Jackson’s signature triangle was in full, celebrated deployment, at least until Kobe Bryant’s patience wore thin on any given possession.
For those critics who dismiss Jackson’s offense as a 1990s relic, 2010 was not that long ago—unless you are counting by recent NBA evolutionary years. By that standard, 2010 feels like the World War II era.
Lonzo Ball said he had never been to a Lakers home game, though he was once at Staples Center when the Los Angeles Clippers, who share the building, hosted the Lakers. The television reception where he lives has been fine, however. And during his four years at Chino Hills High School in San Bernardino County and his one season at UCLA, Ball watched Golden State, among others, extend conventional scoring boundaries and turn the NBA into a fascinating study of life imitating video game.
“It’s definitely turned into a more fast-paced game the last few years,” Ball said. “Everybody’s getting pushed into a different position. Center’s a power forward, power forward’s a center.”
“I think it complements my game very well,” he added, without bragging. “Definitely fast tempo. Been playing like that my whole life.”
So Ball now waits on Magic and the Lakers, praying they will choose him after Markelle Fultz presumably goes to the Philadelphia 76ers with the first pick of this guard-rich draft. For Ball, it’s not just about staying home. It’s also about the buzz that Jeanie Buss, the Lakers’ owner—and Jackson’s former fiancée—created when she tabbed Johnson, a franchise icon, to lift the team from the depression it has been in, more or less, since the Jackson years.
Johnson has been on the job for about three months and has already generated more optimism than Jackson has created with the Knicks in more than three years. Paul George has told the Indiana Pacers he won’t re-sign with them as a free agent after next season because he intends to play for the Lakers. Speculation that LeBron James might want to join him has ramped up.
Johnson on Tuesday unloaded Timofey Mozgov’s bloated contract on the Brooklyn Nets, along with D’Angelo Russell, a talented shoot-first point guard, presumably to be replaced by Ball. Johnson also acquired Brook Lopez, a fine offensive center entering the final year of his contract, while also exploring a deal with Indiana that might bring George in a year early.
Jackson? He’s been in the news, too, infuriating Knicks fans by reportedly listening to offers for Kristaps Porzingis, the skyscraping Latvian who represents the best work of Jackson’s short, undistinguished career as a front-office executive.
It’s actually not irrational for Jackson to consider trading Porzingis, though not because the 21-year-old player, typically referred to as KP, blew off his end-of-season exit meeting with Jackson.
That snub clearly wasn’t Porzingis’s idea as much as it was his support team’s way of letting the Knicks’ owner, James L. Dolan, know that they are all tired of the feuding Jackson has fomented with Carmelo Anthony and Jackson’s usurpation of coaches on all things triangle.
Until Anthony agrees to waive the no-trade clause Jackson handed him—now that was irrational—in 2014, Jackson is hamstrung on the full-rebuild front. In the meantime, why not at least explore the remote possibility of turning Porzingis, his only true commodity, into a trove of assets? Especially when Jackson must know that the Knicks, in sharp contrast to Johnson’s Lakers, are currently toxic to quality free agents.
It has come to that: New York as a place that only players looking to be seriously overpaid (Joakim Noah, anyone?) would consider, in part because Jackson has been so obsessed with the triangle, with recreating the ultimate offensive democracy, which never really existed.
So while the league has rapidly trended toward stretching the floor on offense, opening the lane, exploiting defensive mismatches off the dribble, Jackson’s two best assets are a relatively cumbersome duo—the 7-foot-3 Porzingis and Willy Hernangomez, a skilled 6-foot-11 post player from Spain.
And while Ball has been dreaming of restaging the Magic-fueled Showtime in Los Angeles, Jackson has been conducting triangle tryouts with the fresh-faced likes of Malik Monk, Kentucky shooting guard.
“That’s what we did the whole workout, going over the triangle,” Monk said with an I’m-being-serious smile.
For the record, he and the other guards on the Knicks’ radar all spoke approvingly of the Knicks’ exclusively used offense—Monk’s Kentucky teammate De’Aaron Fox, Dennis Smith Jr. of North Carolina and the 18-year-old Frenchman Frank Ntilikina.
Fox, the most charismatic and perhaps the most gifted of the bunch, said: “What do I know about the triangle? I watched, you know, when Phil was coaching the Lakers. The point guard gets to shoot the ball, have opportunities for isolation at the elbow, even get to play in the low post.”
In other words, not exactly the way Stephen Curry plays. Or how Lonzo Ball will play should he land in LA, his dream scenario and in no way a nightmare.