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…
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