Podcast: When might it be time to take Lonzo Ball’s injury concerns seriously?

Lonzo Ball reportedly won’t be fully healthy when training camp tips off for the Los Angeles Lakers. He’s close, but not quite there. This wouldn’t be concerning if it didn’t follow a trend that dated back to last year. It’s not time to freak out, but the trend needs to bucked sooner rather than later.

Ball (and others on the team) repeatedly missed deadlines by which they were supposed to come back from injury. It’s impossible to completely blame anyone for this as we’ll never have the full story on injuries, but it’s a frustrating update to get given how little news we’ve had in the torture chamber that is August and September in the NBA.

That lack of stories plays a part in some of the overreaction we saw when news dropped that Ball won’t start training camp as a full participant. Any bit of actual Lakers news is really tough to come by this time of year, so of course we’re going to freak out. I just don’t think it’s reached that point... yet.

Still, there are a few things here to talk about regarding the injury itself. First, the timing of his surgery will always be a lightning rod for speculation, as unfair as that might be.

The surgery itself has also been a conversation (because, again, September). Removing a part of the the meniscus versus fully repairing it is always going to drive out the Twitter doctors. Neither Pete nor I know nearly enough about the procedure to be fully-informed on the subject, but there are trade-offs based on what smarter people have told us.

We segue to a brief conversation about Kevin Durant, but don’t want to lend the rumor more credence than it deserves right now.

To finish off the show, Pete and I discuss where our love of basketball was born and how it’s taken us here, as a means to celebrate the release of “Basketball: A Love Story.”

As always, this is just a tidbit of the full context given in the show. Listen to the full discussion below and please check out old episodes, or guarantee you won’t miss any ever again by subscribing on iTunes.