At the 6:08 mark of the first quarter of the Chicago Bulls preseason game vs. the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday, Lonzo Ball checked into an NBA game for the first time in almost three years to a heartfelt standing ovation.
After three knee surgeries over the last two years, the last being a cartilage transplant from a cadaver, a rare procedure for which there isn’t a single successful recovery by an NBA player, it would’ve been enough for Ball to simply run up and down the court a few times. The fact that he looked like, well, Lonzo Ball — like he hadn’t missed a single beat — was nothing short of magical, if not bordering on miraculous.
For a preseason game, you aren’t going to find a bigger goosebumps moment than Ball banging his first 3-point attempt 43 seconds after checking in.
Later in the first quarter, Ball dialed up his second triple from well beyond the arc.
This is the player we remember. Ball might’ve come into the league as the focal point of an offense, but he found his true calling as an off-ball shooter and elite defender. Ball, who completely revamped his jumper with the Pelicans, shot over 42% from 3 on more than seven attempts per game in his most-recent NBA regular season, the 2021-22 campaign. That is top-shelf stuff.
“It felt a lot better playing than watching, I’ll tell you that much,” Ball told reporters in his postgame press conference. “I can’t really put into words how I felt out there, I was just blessed, happy to be out there, man. All the support around me was great, all night. It was definitely a moment I’ll never forget.”
Ball, who finished with 10 points on 4-of-6 shooting in 15 minutes in the Bulls’ 125-123 win, also scored on a pair of cuts, finishing one with a left-handed up and under, and then slipping the seam for a layup in a little two-man action with Zach LaVine. Here’s a look at all four of his buckets, including a re-run of the two 3s because they were just that cool.
It wasn’t just the shooting. Ball is an old-school player who prefers to advance the ball without dribbling any more than absolutely necessary. He’s a connector (he had the hockey assist on a Coby White 3 by just getting the ball to the middle of the floor and letting the spacing open up the pass-pass sequence to the corner) and one of the most effective hit-ahead passers in the league.
Josh Giddey, who the Bulls traded for this summer, is another pace-pushing extraordinaire, and you can see here how quickly Giddey and Ball can team up to create a transition bucket even after a make on the other end.
Beyond the impressive stat line, it was just honestly incredible how great Ball looked. I would go so far as to call it unbelievable — just the way he was moving, in total rhythm. He was all over the place on both ends of the court, relocating and cutting and defending and doing it with equal parts pace and patience.
If Ball had been a little too excited and gotten a little ahead of himself, who could’ve blamed him? But he wasn’t jumpy in the slightest. He was in complete control of his own game and the game as a whole. His feel, as general as that term can be, has always been a specifically brilliant part of his basketball package, and it hasn’t gone anywhere even after three years away from the game. Again, it’s almost unbelievable on the heels of such a devastating injury and lengthy recovery.
“I wasn’t thinking about [the knee] at all,” Ball said. “That’s a positive thing. I didn’t feel it at all. I felt like I was moving great. So now it’s about building, and just continuing to do it night in and night out.
And this is to say nothing of the defender he had become prior to the knee trouble. Along with Alex Caruso in Chicago, Ball was one half of a two-man perimeter wrecking crew, switching and deflecting and creating havoc at every level as a top-five steal merchant and legit shot blocker.
Just as he did offensively, Ball picked up right where he left off defensively. Here he helps down on Julius Randle and blocks his shot out of bounds.
Here he keeps the ball in play, making a sensational save while flying into the Bulls’ bench after sneaking up on Randle from behind for a steal — a play that predictably ignited the United Center crowd.
“The instinctive [defensive] plays, that’s not going to go anywhere,” Ball said. “It’s more about the on-ball, getting over screens like I used to. I’m getting that back. But off the ball, I feel comfortable.”
On top of everything Ball brings to the table on the court, he is also a beloved teammate. In a notable departure from the drama his father created upon his entrance into the league, Ball has always let his play do his talking.
Ball has, at every step, put his head down and done the work through multiple reinventions — from a guy expected to be the face of the Lakers to a role player in New Orleans, from a defective shooter to an elite marksman, and now, from a cursed player whose career appeared doomed to the guy we just watched on Wednesday night who looked like he might just be getting started again.
Everyone respects that kind of grind. It was no surprise to see the way Ball’s teammates honored him with a game ball in the postgame locker room.
Despite the good feels, Ball is not going to be the same player as before. The Bulls are going to take every precaution possible with him, starting with what Ball confirmed will be a 16-minute limit and a hard no on playing back-to-back games.
He’ll try to stretch those limits, of course, because he obviously loves to play. He didn’t have to do all of this to come back. He has already made close to $100 million in his career. Ball is what fellow players refer to as a hooper. He was born to play basketball, and as this experiment continues, we’re all going to keep our fingers crossed that he gets to keep doing that for many years to come.
But that is far from guaranteed.
Again, it needs to be reiterated that an NBA player has never made it back to action following this surgery. Festus Ezeli was the first NBA player to try something similar, undergoing cadaver ligament replacement surgery in 2017. He never played another NBA game.
That sounds like a buzzkill, but it’s just the harsh reality Ball now faces. One awesome preseason game is one thing; but making it though an entire season on relatively light duty on not a surgically repaired knee — but a surgically created knee — is an altogether different challenge.
If this works, Ball will no doubt become the light of hope for other players facing potentially career-ending knee injuries. It’s tempting to get ahead of ourselves and assume that will be the case after watching him play on Wednesday, but that would be a mistake. This is a one-game-at-a-time situation. But man, what a first game it was.
