LaVar Ball has been uncharacteristically quiet over the last several months, but he’s back from Lithuania and has a new controversial take that Lakers’ trainer Gunnar Peterson is to blame for Lonzo’s injury plaued rookie year where he missed 30 games.
LaVar told Alex Kennedy from Hoops Hype that Lonzo was never seriously injured before he got to the Lakers, a fact he blames on Peterson:
“If you’re going to be doing those [workouts with] rubber-bands like that dude Gunnar has him doing, that [is] bulls–t training. That’s what I call it.
“S–t, he wasn’t like that when I brought him over there. When he first came [to the Lakers], he never got hurt. He was never hurt.”
He continued:
“Now, you’ve got these guys talking about, ‘Well, I’ve got this special workout for Lonzo…’ No! Lonzo’s gotta lift that pig iron, that real iron, and he’s gotta run some hills. That’s stuff they don’t have him doing.”
As the Lakers head into the offseason, word has leaked that no player on the roster is off limits in potential trades to secure big time veterans. It will be interesting if Magic and Rob Pelinka will continue to deal with LaVar’s circus, or if pull the plug on the experiment and ship Lonzo out of town.
Here are some of Peterson’s non-LaVar approved training techniques in action.