EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — The first son born into a basketball family, Lonzo Ball was bred for stardom. What he knew about Magic Johnson, a superstar who last played in the NBA a year before he was born, came from the stories his father, LaVar, told and what he could glean from the grainy footage of games that replayed on cable television.
“It was a pleasure to watch,” Lonzo said Thursday. “(I could) learn a lot from him.”
So is it any surprise that when the roles were flipped this spring, and it was Johnson studying footage of Ball, that what the old Lakers great saw looked familiar?