On Sunday, after dinner, I called my mother in Indiana. She watches the Lakers when she can’t sleep. She wanted to know who the new guy was.
I told her what I’d read on BasketNews. Lawson Lovering, 23. Four years of college, Colorado then Utah. Undrafted in 2025. Memphis’s G League team, a 10-day contract in February, two games with the Grizzlies, 7.5 rebounds a game. An Exhibit 10 this summer, cut at the end of September. And now a two-way contract with Los Angeles.
She asked what the coach had said. I read her JJ Redick’s answer, when he was asked what he knew about him: “I know his name is Lawson Lovering.”
Let me tell you, it took me back to 2000. I arrive in Charleroi with one bag and a one-year contract. The first evening, in the hall with the badminton lines, the club president shakes my hand and says my first name. That’s all he knew. He’d written it on a piece of paper. I never held it against him. We learned the rest at the box-out, the following Tuesday.
My mother listened. Then she asked the question she always asks. Does he play defence?
I said I didn’t know. That his best game was against the Jazz, on 20 February, eleven points and eleven rebounds in thirty-two minutes. And that rebounds are already a bit of defence. Here, we’d say “not bad”.
Darnell, that piece of paper with your first name, do we still have it in the club folder? It should go up on the noticeboard.
My mother thought about it. She said the coach knows his name, that everything else is learned in practice, and that at twenty-four, all anyone knew about me was that too.
She said: see?
It’s true, we checked: BasketNews.
