LaMelo Ball’s decision to head to Australia and the NBL over playing in the NCAA was one made more out of necessity than choice. With so many eligibility concerns after spending time playing professionally both in Lithuania and in the short-lived JBA, Ball and his camp opted not to fight the NCAA and, instead, allow Ball to play in the NBL in his year prior to declaring for the NBA Draft.
The NBL served as a suitable launching pad for Ball as he spent the season adding credibility to the hype surrounding him against fellow professional athletes.
Still, that wasn’t enough to erase all the questions surrounding him. In a recent interview with Bro Bible, TNT’s Kenny Smith talked about Ball playing in the NBL over the NCAA and why it may not have helped his game.
It might hurt him as a competitor. You’re jumping from a league that probably isn’t as competitive as college basketball and without as many great coaches.
What you miss when you don’t go to college is the fact that you’re not playing for great coaches. They develop great schemes for you and you have to adjust. It’s a learning curve that he’s missing.
Great players adjust but I think he’d have been able to adjust to the NBA style better if he’d gone to college.
While all of Smith’s points are valid in a vacuum, Ball did have a chance to do all of the things mentioned in the NBL. Ball did play under a first-year head coach but he was apart of a league that adjusted to him and he was forced to adjust back.
And more than anything, he played against fellow professional athletes. From a physicality standpoint, the players in the NBL were bigger, faster and stronger than those in the NCAA.
The surest sign of Ball’s skillset was that his best games in the league came at the end of his time, when teams had scouting tape on him and could gameplan against him. In his final two games, Ball had triple-doubles in each as he had truly begun figuring out the league before his foot injury eventually ruled him out for the season.
There are certainly questions about Ball, but they largely revolve around his game and skillset and not over his decision to play in the NBL over the NCAA.
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