Never meet your idols is as common a phrase in today's day as any. Yet this piece of not-so-crisp advice is actually true for the likes of New Orleans Pelicans guard Lonzo Ball, who patterned his game after LeBron James, only to play alongside him for the first time with the Los Angeles Lakers and soon become a disposable asset in a trade for Anthony Davis.
Now a member of the Pelicans, Ball recalls being kind of “on edge” during his lone season with The King:
“I had been watching him my whole life, and I own his jerseys and everything,” Ball recalled, according to Ric Bucher of Bleacher Report. “…I was kind of on edge, like I didn't know how to be around him. Because I had never really been around someone I looked up to like that. Then I seen him in the locker room, and it was crazy.”
Richard Jefferson, a former James teammates and an unproven rookie once before, remembers what it was like to obtain Jason Kidd's respect upon being selected by the New Jersey Nets, quickly noticing Ball's trajectory as a college prodigy and heading into the pros:
“A lot of these guys go to a premier university for a year and they're a god,” said Jefferson. “Lonzo goes to UCLA, and all he hears is ‘whatever you want.' Then he comes to the Lakers, one of the most storied franchises in the league, and it's the same thing—'whatever you want.' And he hasn't even done anything yet. Of course, it's going to be a shock when suddenly someone suggests he's the reason they're not winning.”
Ball struggled to shoot the ball efficiently for his first two seasons, while also dealing with a plague of injuries that kept him off the court. It didn't take long for James to go on the Davis recruiting trail, in a way throwing his young teammates under the bus.
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