Lonzo Ball impressing in limited role, ready to become starter

After up and down performances forced Alvin Gentry to keep Lonzo Ball on the bench, the New Orleans Pelicans have seen a rise in the guard’s performance.

The youth movement is beginning now for the New Orleans Pelicans, whether they like it or not, and a part of that youth movement was always going to be Lonzo Ball. As the team continues to struggle around him, the crafty guard is continuing to improve in year three.

With a 7-23 record and coming off a loss to the league-worst Golden State Warriors, it couldn’t get a whole lot worse for the Pelicans, who are 1-14 in their last 15 games.

However, the team has to be inspired by the smart basketball currently being played by Lonzo, who’s cut down on a lot of the bad shot selection on listless turnovers that forced him to the bench last month.

In the seven games since being moved to the bench on Dec. 12, Ball is averaging 8.7 points, 5.4 rebounds, 4.4 assists, and 1.6 steals, but is still struggling to find consistency in his shot.

What’s been so inspiring to see is Ball’s improved floor spacing since Alvin Gentry moved him to the bench. Long known and accredited for his court vision as a basketball player and prospect, it took some time for Lonzo to look comfortable in the New Orleans Pelicans’ system.

Overall this season, Ball averages 10.2 points, 5.3 assists, 4.7 rebounds, and 1.3 steals while shooting 38% from the field and 33.6% from three-point territory.

The team would love to see Ball improve his stroke from the floor and from the free-throw line, where he’s shooting 50%, but his reworked jump shot from this offseason is inspirational on its own.

On media day, Executive VP of Basketball Operations David Griffin didn’t demand immediate success from this Pelicans’ bunch, he just wants to see the team getting better. Imperfect, but growing in New Orleans, Lonzo Ball is certainly improving as the season progresses.

It won’t be the catch-all for the Pelicans problems, but New Orleans really needs what Lonzo Ball can bring to a starting lineup.

Starting just one game in the past seven for the Pelicans (a game that J.J. Redick missed), this team has to start finding out what kind of guard Ball can be in a leading role.

While Lonzo Ball continues to post inspiring nights, teammates and starting forward Kenrich Williams continues to struggle from the floor.

Over the past nine games, since an ankle injury held him out for a pair of contests, Williams is averaging 2.3 points, while shooting 17.8% from the floor on 5 attempts and 11.4% from three on 3.9 attempts per contest.

Earlier this week, ESPN‘s Brian Windhorst shared his belief that the New Orleans Pelicans would be willing to move Lonzo Ball this season.

It would be surprising to me, however, to see this team pull the plug on a 21-year-old point guard who’s done some jawdropping stuff when healthy and playing good basketball.

Further, he’s got an affordable contract over the next two seasons, as his rookie deal extends until the end of the 2020-2021 NBA season when the team can then make a decision to hand him a rookie scale extension.

Until next year, trading Ball seems like a bad choice, especially when you consider the potential of the young guard.

There’s also some speculation that the team is making Jrue Holiday available to the right bidder, despite the fact that David Griffin has publicly scoffed at that notion. If Holiday winds up in another city, Ball will immediately become the lead guard on this Pelicans team.

It’s been pointed out multiple times by many people, but it’s worth noting that Lonzo Ball didn’t have a clean bill of health going into the offseason, meaning the basketball skill improvement time many players find crucial in the summer was held up for rehab on his ankle.

Without a full season in New Orleans and a full offseason of working on skills for the next, I don’t think we’re getting the right perspective on what Lonzo is going to be in this league or even how great he could be for this city.

Still, Lonzo Ball has the rare ability to be this team’s Draymond Green, a junkyard dog on the defensive end who can flash as an elite playmaker with his stunning offensive game. Both posses incredible basketball instincts, but Green has just been a more willing glue guy.

The Pelicans should also be wary of doing anything drastic with Lonzo Ball before the return of Zion Williamson, which is inching ever closer as the big-bodied rookie progresses in his right knee rehabilitation.

In practice and in preseason action, we’ve seen Lonzo Ball and Zion Williamson do some pretty incredible stuff, stuff that’ll curtail talk of the Pelicans demise, stuff that’ll make the Top 10 on a nightly basis.

When Zion returns for the Pelicans, a lot is going to change for this team. It seems like you could really see the positive returns coming for Lonzo Ball’s assist totals almost immediately, especially of the rest of the squad feels the floor spacing that’ll arrive with the emergence of Zion.

Right now, the Pelicans aren’t giving fans a whole lot of reasons to watch, as they move closer and closer to the bottom of the league.

Moving Lonzo Ball back into the starting lineup, or at least giving him more minutes in crunch time, seems like a correction that’ll help this team win more games in the future.

While the team is 1-12 with Ball in the starting lineup, many of those games came early in the season when the team had no identity and like many others, Lonzo was playing his first minutes of basketball in Pelicans blue.

There’s still not a whole lot to like from the first thirty New Orleans Pelicans games of the season, there’s been at least some optimism at times for young players like Lonzo Ball. He very well could be a part of this team’s long-term future, so they need to know if he can start alongside Zion.