If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say “Brandon Ingram and Lonzo Ball just to need to put on 20 pounds of muscle this summer and they’ll be straight”, I’d be able to afford the first quarter of a Lakers home game at Staples Center.
This idea that weight and muscle mass (hypertrophy) equates to strength is a common misconception and simply isn’t true (click here, here, here, here, and here for more info). Rather, there are other factors like “neural adaptations” (aka the nervous system becoming more efficient at a specific movement) that are key contributors to strength gains - as the chart below demonstrates:
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What this chart means is that even if Ingram and Ball did gain 20 pounds of muscle, it could result in as little as a two percent increase in their strength levels.