Digging into the LaMelo Brothers Saga
Alright, so I found myself going down the rabbit hole with the LaMelo brothers recently. You got Lonzo, LiAngelo, LaMelo… the whole media circus, the dad, everything. It kinda got under my skin, all the noise. So I figured, screw it, let me actually spend some time and see what the deal is, separate the hype from the actual game, especially with LaMelo making waves.
First thing, I had to actually watch them play. Not just the flashy ESPN top 10s, but real, full games. So I started digging up footage. Chino Hills high school games, that weird Lithuania stint, LaMelo in Australia, and then their NBA careers. It was a pain trying to find good, full game recordings for some of the older stuff, let me tell you.
Then I realized just watching wasn’t enough, my memory’s not what it used to be. Needed to track this stuff. Fired up a basic spreadsheet, nothing complex. Just started hammering in notes for each game I managed to sit through.
- Play types they kept going back to.
- Court vision – was it real or just flashy passes?
- Shot selection and form – consistent or nah?
- Defense – were they actually trying or just waving guys by?
Took way longer than I expected. Seriously, hours spent just hunting down clips and then forcing myself to watch some pretty rough basketball at times, especially the early stuff. Mostly ended up focusing on Lonzo and LaMelo; they just had way more accessible pro footage. Made the comparison cleaner anyway.
What jumped out wasn’t just skill, but the whole vibe on the court. Lonzo, particularly early NBA Lonzo, felt… controlled? Maybe trying to fit a mold. LaMelo? Kid seemed like he was improvising from day one. That flashy style, the risky passes – it wasn’t just for show, it seemed like his actual default setting. It was kind of annoying how effortless he made some wild stuff look.
I did crunch some basic numbers too. Pulled rookie year stats, or the closest equivalent for their pro starts. Points, assists, boards, shooting splits. Shoved them into columns next to each other. Yeah, the numbers showed differences, but honestly, the tape was way more telling. You can see an assist number, but watching how LaMelo finds those angles compared to Lonzo’s more straightforward reads… that’s the stuff you don’t get from a box score.
LiAngelo? Barely scratched the surface. Couldn’t find enough consistent, high-level tape to make a real comparison work. Felt like a waste of time trying to force it. So yeah, it became a Lonzo vs LaMelo exercise mostly.
Didn’t produce some masterpiece analysis, you know. It was mainly to satisfy my own curiosity, cut through the BS headlines. Honestly, it felt like a bit of a chore by the end. My kids were wondering why dad was watching grainy high school basketball instead of cartoons. But hey, at least now when people talk about them, I feel like I actually looked instead of just repeating takes I heard somewhere. It’s something, I guess.
