This story originally appeared in the Jan. 23, 2017, issue of Sports Illustrated. Subscribe to the magazine here.
The short ones, the pudgy ones, the ones who couldn’t drive or kick, pick or roll, rise or finish, those were the players Lonzo Ball wanted. You could take the five-star recruits with the superhuman wingspans and astronomic verticals, with the vision and knowledge and feel. But not the scrawny 16-year-old perched at the end of the bench, still waiting for that growth spurt, still working on that left hand.