It raised a few eyebrows when Lonzo Ball went on the Gilbert Arenas Tells All podcast this week and talked about his career in the past tense.
“I felt like I never shortchanged the game. Like I felt like I gave everything I had to hoop, and I felt everything I got in my life is because of hoop,” the eldest Ball sibling said. “So I’m grateful to even make it to the league and even be able to play for nine years…
“You see where you’re supposed to be, and then you physically can’t get there. So it’s just like, I don’t know. You gotta be comfortable with yourself, to be honest with you, like that’s how I am. I feel like, to be honest, I don’t think I ever got to my peak.”
That may sound like a guy who doesn’t expect to play in the NBA again, which became a rumor that suddenly picked up a life of its own on social media, with some accounts saying Ball had retired. Ball quickly pushed back on that — he would love to play again.
Ball, 28, started last season with Cleveland and had the chance to step into a backup point guard role, and through 35 games averaged 4.6 points, 4 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game, shooting 27.2% from 3. With the Cavaliers trading for James Harden near last season’s deadline, they traded him to the Utah Jazz, who waived him.
He has not been picked up on an NBA contract since. That doesn’t mean he’s not open to one.
Ball, the No. 2 pick of the Lakers in 2017, played a couple of seasons in Los Angeles before being traded to New Orleans as part of the Anthony Davis deal. He spent a couple of years with the Pelicans before a sign-and-trade to Chicago, where he looked like a great fit with DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine on a team that started 24-10 — and then the knee injuries hit. It started with a torn meniscus, but that surgery didn’t solve the problem and Ball missed all of the next two seasons undergoing a series of surgeries, and eventually underwent a cartilage transplant surgery in 2023 to help fix a “bone-on-bone” knee at that point.
Ball played for Chicago and last season with Cleveland after that major surgery, but he did not stick. He may not get another shot in the NBA, and he sounds good with where he is in life, but that doesn’t mean he’s giving up entirely.
He’s not retired. He said so himself.
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