CLEVELAND – The Rockets need not worry about prepping for a Lonzo Ball return.
According to coach Billy Donovan, it’s safe to say that the next four opponents after Houston – Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta and Memphis – they can safely go ahead and remove Ball’s name from the scouting report.
Ball got up shots before Wednesday’s game in New York and told his coach then that he was hoping for a Sunday return, but by late Wednesday evening and into Thursday’s off day, a certain amount of reality didn’t just creep in, but kicked down the door.
The discomfort in the strained right wrist was still there.
“Did a lot of shooting in New York, definitely struggled, it was a struggle,” Donovan admitted on Friday. “I think the catching was a struggle. Just in my conversations in New York, I think he’s going to need at least the rest of next week again. The dribbling is OK. It’s just the long-range shooting. And the hard part for him is it’s the right hand. It’s his shooting hand, his dominant hand, and again when I say the next week, I’m not saying he’s playing next week. It’s where he needs another week here.”
Donovan did make sure to preface that it wasn’t a setback with the wrist. It was more about pushing too far and having to take a step back.
The unfortunate part for Ball – like he hasn’t already had enough misfortune with three left knee surgeries that cost him two-and-a-half years in street clothes – is the longer he’s out, the tougher it will be to get reconditioned. For a guy playing out the final year of his contract and trying to show teams that he’s worth a financial commitment, adding miles to that uphill climb isn’t ideal.
Ball suffered the injury on Oct. 28 in the win over Memphis, and according to Donovan, the original prognosis was anywhere from a couple weeks to six weeks. He’s not even three weeks in yet, so there’s a window he’s still in.
“It all depends on how quickly it heals and what he can necessarily tolerate,” Donovan added. “Because it’s his dominant hand he’s just not there right now.”
Extra work
Patrick Williams didn’t like where he was from a conditioning and reps standpoint through the early part of the regular season, so to his credit he did something about it.
The forward admitted on Friday that because of the recovery time it took to get over his foot surgery in the summer and all the open five-on-five runs he missed, he made sure to grab player development coaches whenever there’s been any extra time so that he can get shots up and drills in.
Styles make the fight?
Donovan was asked about most of the NBA playing very similarly as far as either going to the rim or settling for threes, and if it could hurt the game by becoming so repetitive from night to night. He actually gave a well thought out response.
“A lot of it is how you generate shots, right,” Donovan said. “Like you’re not going to stop a team from shooting threes. Like how efficient can you be? The league has gotten younger and a lot of these guys have not had a long college experience or anything like that, and there’s a learning curve for these guys to learn the league and also learning how to play. The hard part for some of these guys is there’s very limited practice time, so what you’re trying to do in some ways is keep things simple and efficient of how you’re trying to play.”
“Those are the things stylistically you need to do.”