Dating back to even during his time at Chino Hills, Lonzo Ball has been known as an up-tempo player who can push the ball quickly up the court. The fast pace paired with Ball’s high basketball IQ often leads to easy baskets for either him or, more often, his teammates.
As the Pelicans have hit their stride in recent weeks with five wins in the last six games, Ball’s strong play has been a big factor. Head coach Alvin Gentry talked about Ball after practice on Tuesday.
“I think he’s playing exactly as we anticipated and wanted him to play now. Obviously, the making seven threes is a huge bonus for us but just the pace he has us playing at, the attack mode he’s been in and how he’s found, you know, when…E’Twaun was going great, he was the guy that found him a couple times. So, like I said, I think this is the Lonzo that we thought (we’d get). And the bottom line is that he’s really kind of healthy. He’s had these nagging things but he’s healthy and I think, because he’s healthy, he’s been much more aggressive.”
Brandon Ingram echoed the importance of Ball’s ability to push the pace and put pressure on the defense.
“For him to come in and push the pace like that…it flattens out the defense a lot. And he’s a good enough player to see the floor really well. He seeks the early, open guy or the hockey pass to the next guy. He just feels out everything on the basketball floor when he plays like that.”
On Sunday, the Pelicans pieced together one of their best quarters of the year in the fourth period against Houston, outscoring the Rockets 41-19 to run away with a game they trailed for large portions. Likely not coincidentally, Ball had his fingerprints all over the place.
While it was E’Twaun Moore that did much of the scoring, Ball did plenty of setting him up as Gentry noted. The first Pelican basket of the quarter came as Ball grabbed the ball and immediately raced up the court. Because of that, he created an open look for Moore that he buried.
The next basket of the quarter was another Moore score off a Ball assist. This time, Ball attacked a scrambling defense in the halfcourt and once again created an open look that Moore converted.
A string of Moore baskets culminated in another vintage Ball play. Derrick Favors gets the rebound, quickly finds Ball and the latter does the rest. The underrated part of this play is that Ball found Moore early and drove right at his direction of the court to help draw defenders to him and create space for an open shot.
With Ball, as with many players, when he gets a bounce in his step after playing well, he’s a different player. While some players need to hit a couple baskets to do that, Ball can get that sort of bounce from a couple nice passes. His energy level picks up as does his activity level and he starts flying around the court.
Many times for Ball, that elevated activity level manifests itself on the defensive end.
At this point in the game, Ball is playing well enough that everyone on the Rockets defense has an eye on him. Pair that with Ball’s willingness to push the ball and make the right play and you get instances like this.
Pause the video at the moment before Ball makes the pass and note that all five Rockets defenders are below the three-point line.
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