Brandon Ingram Discussion: He Is Who We Thought He Could Be

Ok fair enough. When a report surfaces that some player's "camp" has leaked info it means that someone from the entourage of that player has leaked the info, NOT the player. Now, that leak MIGHT represent the players own thoughts or it might not, but you can't assume that the leak represents the player directly.

In Lonzo's case, he has proven to be a good teammate both at UCLA and for the Lakers. Lavar's shenanigans are not the result of meetings with Lonzo. Lavar has his own agenda and acts and talks off the top of his own head, not Lonzo's.

 

I agree with that. It's why I've been saying all week things are not as simple as we want them to be. I believe all this talk about the Clippers; not necessarily that he wants to be there over the Lakers, but that he'd take them if he could get out of San Antonio. It's why I want to trade for him, but I'm alone on that island right now.

 

I'm with you, but I switch BI and Kuzma. I like Ingram immensely, but Kuzma to me screams star. He's got what it takes both on and off the court.

 

Just saw in a Trudell tweet that BI shot over 46% from three after the all star break.

 

He played only 6 games after the All-Star break.

He was 6/13 which is nice, but a small sample size.

Ingram post All-Star: 15.5 points, 6.7 rebounds, 5.3 assists in 6 games.

Kuzma post All-Star: 17.4 points, 7.4 rebounds, 2 assists in 21 games.

Kuzma shot 38.5% on 135 attempts from outside.

 

To be fair, Kawhi doesn’t scream star even now, and he definitely doesn’t have what it takes “off the court”. I see Ingram very much the same way, he might not scream star, but the leap he took from year one to two was really something, and I can’t get over how much of a defensive threat and unstoppable scorer with his jumper AND slinking to the hoop he can potentially be with that insane length. I love Kuzma, but if I could only keep one it’s ingram, because of the 2 way player potential, very much in the vein of Kawhi.

 

I mean Kawhi is a Finals MVP and was extremely close to winning regular season MVP a year ago. He's got "it" already.

I think Kuzma has at least as much potential as Ingram and showed flashes of stardom that Ingram simply hasn't. Kuzma took over games last year in a way none of other kids really have. For all of Ingram's tremendous defensive potential, Kuzma had a better Defensive +/- and edged Ingram slightly in DRtg. Kuzma is a stud. I'm not sure why I'm the only one on this island right now honestly.

 

You are not alone on that island. Kuzma has the "star mentality", you can see it.

 

To be honest, I just saw you say you were “done” with this earlier so I thought I’d repeat what other people had already said to see if you would keep fighting.



I don’t want to lose either kid, Ingram is my favorite Laker, but damn those games where Kuz got hot and was drilling threes and making whirling hookshots across the lane were fun.

 

All of this talk and debate on who we should give up Kuz or Ingram. We don't have to give up either, that's what's so frustrating about this. If Kawhi is really the person we think he is or the person his uncle and team are saying he is we just need to just wait till next July.

Kobe has always said if you have to do a lot of selling this team to a player they aren't cut out to be a player on this team. We have Lebron and if we need to sell Kawhi more I don't want him.

Why make this so much harder than it needs to be? 5-10 years from now Kuz and Ingram very likely are going to be something special because of all the work they put in. We don't even know if Kawhi can hold up 82 games let alone deep playoff runs. This isn't rocket science, folks....

 

This is my island.

I’m not interested in giving up BI, Kuz, or Lonzo. I see unique qualities in all three. They can possibly be our Steph / Klay / Draymond type foundation for a long dominance. Rob has positioned us to sign Kawhi next year. LeBron says he’s fine with waiting. No need to give away the future for the present. If Kawhi doesn’t end up coming on his own then I don’t want his strange rear end on this team anyway.