Lonzo Ball was supposed to be the next big thing when the Los Angeles Lakers drafted him second overall during the 2017 NBA Draft, which also had Jayson Tatum, De’Aaron Fox, Lauri Markkanen, and Bam Adebayo.
However, two years later, the former UCLA standout was traded to the New Orleans Pelicans as part of the huge Anthony Davis trade because the Los Angeles Lakers were in win-now mode with LeBron James on their roster.
In hindsight, it worked out well for the Los Angeles Lakers since they won the 2020 NBA championship a year after the trade. And according to Lonzo Ball himself, he would’ve done the trade too if he was the general manager of the Purple and Gold.
“That’s the first time that I realized that this is definitely a business. You know? At the same time, it was like it’s Anthony Davis. To be fair, I would have traded myself for Anthony Davis,” Ball said at The WAE Show.
Lonzo Ball spent two seasons with the New Orleans Pelicans before joining the Chicago Bulls in the summer of 2021. Right now, the 26-year-old is still recovering from a major knee injury that kept him out for the last two seasons.
The Los Angeles Lakers are far from being a title contender
Since winning the NBA championship in 2020, the Los Angeles Lakers haven’t made it back to the NBA Finals. And since LeBron James is not getting any younger, some fans are clamoring for the team to start rebuilding their squad.
The offseason moves made recently by the Los Angeles Lakers don’t exactly put them back into title contenders status, as they only re-signed LeBron James and Max Christie to multi-year deals and got Dalton Knecht and Bronny James via this summer’s NBA Draft.
