New Orleans Pelicans teammates frustrated with Brandon Ingram

The New Orleans Pelicans may be in their off-season, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t still have some news surrounding them.

This go around, that tea is about former Most Improved Player of the Year and one-time All-Star Brandon Ingram. The Pelicans’ forward missed 37 games this season with an assortment of injuries (most notably a sprained big left toe). But apparently, to some of his teammates, Ingram didn’t do a sufficient enough job of playing through those ailments.

Pelicans’ writer Christian Clark reported on this phenomenon in a recent article for NOLA.com. He wrote that “Ingram has sometimes seemed unwilling to play through minor discomfort, to the point where some of his teammates have become frustrated with him over the past two years.”

This is in line with some reporting Clark had in mid-January when Ingram was taking longer than initially expected to return from that toe injury we mentioned earlier. In that piece, he wrote, “Inside the Pelicans’ organization, frustration about Ingram’s extended absence has started to mount. It is not a novel feeling, either. The amount of games Ingram missed last season with minor injuries caused a similar sentiment among Pelicans’ staffers and several of his teammates.”

Interestingly enough, when Ingram missed two months with that toe injury (29 games), he told The Athletic’s Will Guillory that it was the “longest two months of my life.”

"“It was hard. There were certain days when it felt like I had to fight just to be there mentally for my teammates and for myself,” Ingram told The Athletic. “I had to fight just to keep a smile on my face so they wouldn’t see me down. I’m a person that believes everything happens for a reason. So, I just tried to dig deep, real deep down and get myself out of that dark place. I learned a lot about myself during that time.”"

At the end of the day, the reason that Ingram’s teammates are frustrated about him not being on the court and that this is a whole thing is because he is so awesome when he is playing basketball. Just this year, he went on a three-game stretch where he averaged 31.3 points, 6.3 rebounds, and ten assists on 52.5% field goal percentage from the floor, leading the team to a 3-0 record during that time and earning Western Conference Player of the Week honors in the process.

Ingram is a hell of a basketball player, and hopefully, next season, he won’t have any injuries he needs to worry about playing through.