If members of the Los Angeles Lakers coaching staff asked newly-minted point guard Lonzo Ball to dig deep and find himself before his most recent on-court action, he may have taken that advice a little too literally.
According to Bleacher Report, the media darling of a rookie supposedly listens to himself rapping as part of his pregame ritual. Shahan Ahmed, a sports reporter for an NBC affiliate in Los Angeles, said that music Ball was playing prior to taking the court Saturday night against the Minnesota Timberwolves featured a track that he spat some bars on, almost certainly the song used in that TV commercial that was used to promote his younger brother LaMelo Ball's line of Big Baller brand shoes.
The real question now is get a full rundown of Lonzo's pregame playlist and dissect things further. Is there more than one track of his own rapping that makes it onto the list, or is it just the one? After he famously dragged Nas for not being "real" hip-hop music, but cited Migos and Future has the realest music there. He even called the reporter who engaged him in the initial conversation "outdated" and implied that Nas' discography is not something that people are digging up and listening to anymore. While the opinion on how old and "outdated" a song or album by Nas might seem to a younger, Ball-led generation, there's no denying that the Lakers guard's comments were polarizing to say the least. And it's not the first time he's courted controversy by expressing his taste in rap music. When he listed his five favorite emcees as being Future, DMX, 50 Cent, Lil Wayne and Tupac, there was definitely some Twitter backlash, mostly from people who said that he could now never make a move to New York as a free agent.
https://twitter.com/_/status/903611198071037952
https://twitter.com/_/status/903423003266080770
As for his on-court performance Saturday night, Lonzo finished with only five points on 2-9 shooting from the field, but filled up the stat sheet in other respects, dishing eight assists while also getting seven rebounds, two steals and three turnovers.