The New Orleans Pelicans reportedly agreed to a deal with Stan Van Gundy as the franchise’s new head coach on Wednesday. Not initially a commonly-discussed candidate when the Pelicans fired Alvin Gentry, Van Gundy emerged as a finalist last week during the interview process.
While he’s had a wealth of head coaching experience in his career, Van Gundy’s most recent stop was as a television analyst with TNT. As a byproduct of his duties as an NBA analyst, Van Gundy appeared on podcasts to discuss the NBA.
Interestingly, just prior to the league’s restart inside the bubble in Orlando, Van Gundy appeared on The Lowe Post with ESPN’s Zach Lowe to talk about the Pelicans Grizzlies. Specifically, the two dedicated an entire segment to Lonzo Ball’s strong season prior to the bubble.
Van Gundy talked about Ball’s season at length, a quote that is even more illuminating now that he is the head coach of the team.
“To me, Lonzo Ball, when you’re looking at his positives, size, smarts, I think the guy’s a very, very smart player, and he’s extremely unselfish. He would much rather pass the ball than do anything else on the court. So, you’ve got the start toward being a very effective basketball player. As you mentioned, shooting 38% from three and making like 2.5 threes per game. He had games where he shot like 12 shots.
And a thing I will say, one of the things that I thought was a good step forward for Lonzo Ball this year is he had some games where he was 1-for-10, 1-for-11 from three and I saw that as a positive because in the past, what I had see from him if he’d shoot those first three and they wouldn’t go in, he was passing up shots. Now, I think Alvin Gentry had convinced him like ‘No, no, no, you’re going to keep shooting the ball and if you’re open, you shoot it.’ So, I think that they’ve got a good thing in Lonzo Ball.”
Fans looking for positives about the impending Ball-Van Gundy partnership will find the quote particularly endearing. Ball’s growth as a player was evident in many ways last season but how much trust he gained in his jumper was the biggest sign of encouragement.
Ball’s success in the NBA will be largely tied to how well he can shoot from range. Having confidence in his new shot will be big as he heads into his first full off-season of building from the base he started last off-season.
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