It looks like the Brandon Ingram rumors weren’t true

Last month, it was reported that members of the New Orleans Pelicans were growing frustrated with Brandon Ingram’s unwillingness to play through injuries. As a brief refresher, here’s a quote from Pelicans’ beat writer Christian Clark’s article on the matter:

“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,” Clark wrote for NOLA.com.

However, judging from the sound bite that Head Coach Willie Green gave on Sunday during the Pelicans’ Summer League game against the Golden State Warriors, it seems that this may not actually be the case.

https://twitter.com/PelicansNBA/status/1678237412038791168?s=20

“[Ingram] is a coach’s dream. First one in the gym pretty much everyday. [He] does everything you ask him to do. His teammates love him. He’s a leader. He’s a quiet leader, but he’s a leader…He’s an All-Star caliber player, and we saw that in the last 25 games with us [last season].”

Obviously, you have to have a little bit of skepticism when it comes to comments made by players/coaches to the media on live television. However, as you will see in the video above, while Green was making those comments, Ingram was courtside next to some of his teammates (Jose Alvarado, Naji Marshall, Larry Nance Jr., Herbert Jones, and Trey Murphy III). So, clearly, they like hanging out with him enough to chill with him at Summer League.

On top of that, it still seems like the organization has plenty of faith left in Ingram. When there were rumors circulating about the team looking to move up in the draft to select now Portland Trail Blazers guard Scoot Henderson, it was reported that the Pelicans preferred to move Zion Williamson over Ingram.

Now, this isn’t to say that the initial reports aren’t true. After all, Clark only said that some of his teammates were growing dissatisfied with him, not all of them. But if you’re a Pelicans fan, hearing Green talk about him, seeing him hanging with his teammates, and knowing how the front office values him should help ease any fears the initial rumors might have created.