Lonzo Ball wants to be known for his defense.
It’s always been a calling card for Ball. The offensive side of his game is splashier — playing quarterback with full-court heaves and no-look passes, slinging 3-pointers with some of the best efficiency on the Chicago Bulls roster. But Ball’s ability to disrupt and discombobulate an opposing team on defense is perhaps his most important contribution to the team.
However, in the early weeks of this season, Ball still wasn’t sure when — or if — he would get that part of his game back.
In training camp, Ball was prepared to adjust his entire defensive approach to accommodate whatever losses his body had suffered due to spending two full seasons on the sidelines. He was wavering in fundamental aspects of his defensive approach at the perimeter — struggling to work over screens, feeling a step behind at the point of attack.
That was OK with Ball. He felt lucky to be on the court at all and trusted his own basketball IQ to plug the gaps in what his body could handle. If he needed to hang back off attackers or take fewer risks, that was a compromise that he could accept.
But five games into his season, Ball is beginning to find his footing on defense — and surprising himself in the process.
“It’s coming back a lot faster than I’d thought,” Ball said. “I feel like I’m getting a little more bounce, a little more spring every game, so hopefully it just keeps improving over time. … I’m probably more cognitive of what I can and can do, but I’m doing things that I thought I wouldn’t be able to do this early, so I have no complaints at all.”
As a defender, Ball felt his main strength was his ability to never pose a liability to his own team. Sure, he can pick a guard’s pocket on the perimeter or rotate off his man to swat a block into the stands. And yes, he’ll keep making flashy highlights by diving on the floor and into the stands and over other players to snag a loose ball.
But Ball prides himself in being practically switchable on any play. This trait is an equal balance of his mental approach to the game and his physical approach to defense. Ball embraces contact, utilizing his unique size — 6-foot-6 as a guard — to use his lower body to knock players off balance and keep opponents in front of him.
This is crucial for the Bulls this season. The roster is packed with smaller guards — Ball described this group as “light-sized” players — which means they switch on defense as often as any team in the league. And whenever he gets on the court, Ball is at the heart of the team’s scheme to switch early and often off screens.
Despite the loss, coach Billy Donovan felt last Friday’s game against the Boston Celtics highlighted Ball’s improved ability to navigate this part of the defense. The Bulls routinely ceded switches to rotate Ball onto bigs like Kristaps Porziņģis. And while Ball will never go toe-to-toe against these centers in the paint, he can still slow them down enough to functionally offset a mismatch.
Even for a larger guard like Ball, this is one of the most physically demanding aspects of defending. Donovan never expected Ball to jump back into this part of his game so quickly — and noted that the difference has been stark even from week to week as the guard attempts to build back to starting form.
“It’s amazing to me. It really is,” Donovan said. “It really speaks to his mentality and his understanding of how he can go out there and try to impact the game with the amount of minutes that he gets.”
The Celtics game also marked an important turning point for Ball, whose minutes restriction was bumped up to 18 minutes on Monday after logging 22 minutes against Boston. That’s only two minutes more than before, an increase small enough that Ball couldn’t help laughing at it on Monday morning.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll take it,” Ball joked.
But after a short respite due to a sprained wrist, Ball is feeling optimistic about his outlook with the Bulls this season.
It’s a daily conversation between Ball and the Bulls medical staff. Every morning, he provides the Bulls staff with a “readiness score” — a simple rating of how he feels on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being completely unable to play and 10 being the best he could possibly feel.
Ball said he woke up at a 7.5 on Monday morning — and hasn’t fallen below a 7 this season. Although it’s an arbitrary barometer, Ball feels this constant report is a strong reflection of his improved outlook on his physical stature this season.
“It’s definitely work that I have to get in every week that I know I have to get in no matter what to stay on a good progression,” Ball said. “Between me, the coaching staff and the training staff, we’re all on the same page pretty much every day. We have to talk every day about it, just make sure that we stay on the straight line. Every game that I’ve been able to play, I’ve been fine. Hopefully I’ll continue to do that.”
