NEW YORK — As he put on his tinted gray, élevée suit coat hours before the NBA draft, Brandon Ingram nodded his head with satisfaction and said something that Los Angeles Lakers fans will surely love to hear: “I’m ready make a statement.”
“I wanted to go a little flashy tonight, this is my dream come true — to play in the NBA,” Ingram told USA TODAY Sports.
Except flashy is the opposite of Ingram’s fundamentally sound play on the court and his lackadaisical demeanor off it. Yet the former Duke forward will now have the Hollywood spotlight brightly shining as he becomes a key part of the storied franchise’s rebuilding process.
“There’s a lot of pressure that comes with playing for a team like the Lakers, being in a big city like Los Angeles. But man, I’m ready for it,” the lengthy 6-foot-9 Ingram said. “What people don’t know about me, that they should, is I’m a fighter. I’m not going there to lose. You might see how I act, or my size, but I’ve got that inner strength, that character to help a team.”
Ingram’s mother, Joann, says her son’s relaxed demeanor is just what’s on the surface. Beneath it lies a fire that will catapult him into becoming an instant star for a struggling franchise that will need an All-Star right away.
“There have been so many games where he walks out there all lazy-looking and everyone is like, ‘psshh.’ But then when he plays, everyone shuts up,” Joann Ingram said. “It’s almost like a Clark Kent-Superman transformation. He doesn’t go out there to be good. He goes out there to be great.”
Ingram, who focused on improving his body — conditioning, weightlifting and eating six meals a day to bulk up — leading up to draft night, believes he can offer a team a versatile style of play that translates to the professional level right away, but also feels he’s just tapped into his potential. If his first and only season at Duke is a barometer for his growth rate, ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said the sky is the limit.
“(No. 1 pick) Ben Simmons is a full year older than Brandon Ingram,” Bilas says. “You kind of look at that with players, what’s their growth going to be like, what are they going to look like when they’re 23 or 24 years old.”
As a freshman, Ingram averaged 17.3 points and 6.8 rebounds a game, in leading the Blue Devils to the Sweet 16. Before that, he led Kinston (N.C.) to four consecutive state titles.
“Being selected early, he’s going to one of the worse teams in the league. No one man can be a savior for a team, but Brandon doesn’t like to lose. That challenge will make him better,” his father, Donald Ingram said. “For him to make it to Duke and the NBA, it shows how determined he was for the goal he set forth. Where we’re from in Kinston (N.C.), it’s a small town riddled with crime. A lot of his age group ended up in gangs, locked up, or killed. His drive made him mature.”
