Amid word that the Celtics won't part with any of their top players in a trade for Kawhi Leonard, comes more intrigue.
Did Lonzo Ball's camp leak word of his torn meniscus in order to keep the Lakers from including him in a Leonard deal?
That's what ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski theorizes on his podcast.
An excerpt, at about the 9:30 mark:
That knee injury, I think there was a belief around the Lakers is that it was within his world that that got leaked out there to keep him from getting traded. He doesn’t want to be traded from L.A. It wasn’t the Lakers who wanted information out on that knee injury. There were a lot of teams who were checking on possible deals with the Lakers. They wanted to know. There were a lot of questions about that knee.
It seems LeBron James is Lonzo Ball's favorite player. And James, upon agreeing to his four-year, $154 million mega-deal to join the Lakers this week, said he's excited to play with Ball. Though James and Ball's rather loquacious father, LaVar, clashed last year.
Boston Celtics
There's also the matter of the Lakers' signing of ex-Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo, who'll compete with Lonzo Ball for point guard minutes if Ball isn't dealt. (LA shed another ex-Celtic PG when they renounced the free agent rights to Isaiah Thomas earlier this week). Before James' decision, a Washington Post report said the Spurs were "uninterested in Lonzo Ball" as part of a Leonard deal so perhaps there was no need to leak anything about a knee injury in the first place.