On Tuesday, top prospect Lamelo Ball had a meeting with the Minnesota Timberwolves, who own the top pick in the NBA draft.
He met with them in Southern California, in which he did not do a workout for them. Gersson Rosas, the Timberwolves’ president of basketball operations, and head coach Ryan Saunders attended the meeting.
With D’Angelo Russell on the team, it looks like the Timberwolves are just doing their due diligence. Drafting another point guard in Lamelo Ball would be a strange move indeed.
Lamelo Ball is scheduled to meet with some other teams in the weeks leading up to the draft. One team is the Golden State Warriors, who own the second pick. The other teams are the Charlotte Hornets, who own the third pick, and the Chicago Bulls, who own the fourth pick. But, he is not expected to work out for any of these teams.
According to Rick Bonnell of The Charlotte Observer, Lamelo has not done well in his first couple of interviews. So far, Ball has interviewed with the New York Knicks and the Timberwolves. He also had a zoom meeting with the Warriors in early October. Here is what Bonnell said on Charlotte’s 102.5 FM WFNZ:
“Here is what I’m hearing from the league at large: LaMelo Ball is not performing very well at job interviews. I’ve heard that from multiple sources. He is not improving his perception via job interview. There are people drafting later in the top 10 who were not preparing for the possibility of Ball still being around and, I’m not saying that he will be a top-three pick. I am saying that I know for a fact that there are teams later in the top 10 who are doing more research on him because they no longer think it’s a given he will.”
Perhaps the Knicks, with the eighth pick, will have a chance to snag Ball now.
