Lonzo and LaMelo Ball to face each other for the first time in a regulation basketball game

For the first time in their lives, Lonzo and LaMelo Ball will face each other in a regulation basketball game.

The two Ball brothers, three years apart, have never faced each other outside of pickup matches and duels in the Ball’s backyard. Friday night’s contest between Lonzo’s New Orleans Pelicans and LaMelo’s Charlotte Hornets will be meaningful to both.

“I think it’s going to be a lot of fun,” Lonzo said Thursday. “This is the first time that we have teamed up with a real game. … I think it just shows that all the hard work has paid off. We are very close, we have grown together doing the same same thing. if he’s younger than me. “

The two brothers talked about backyard games growing up. Lonzo said he was always too big to play LaMelo one-on-one, but there were a lot of 2v2 or 3v3 games. He said LaMelo had to play against a bigger one. compete all his life, which entered his game today – he is not afraid of any opponent.

LaMelo said “nobody took it easy” with him in the yard.

“This is probably the most competitive basketball I’ve been in – in the backyard, out there, fighting, tearing, hitting concrete, playing real hard,” LaMelo said. Thursday. “Parents are afraid when their children go back there. It was a lot. Just something you had to witness, for real.

Neither brother tried to create the possibility of guarding each other when they hit the ground on Friday night. Instead, the two said they would do whatever their respective coaches told them to do to come out and win.

Maybe the family group cat will find out the truth, but LaMelo said this one isn’t about bragging rights.

“It’s all about love. He’s my brother,” LaMelo said. “We grew up together. You know our pop has been very close to us. We’ve spent every day together. We talk to each other almost all the time now. He’s still my brother at the end of the day.”

Lonzo and LaMelo performed together for a year in high school – when Lonzo was a senior and LaMelo was a freshman – alongside his brother LiAngelo at Chino Hills High School in California in 2015-16. This team went undefeated and finished the season 35-0.

After that, the two took different paths to get to the NBA. While Lonzo went the traditional route, playing for one season at UCLA, LaMelo chose to go overseas, playing for one season in the Australian National Basketball League.

“Yeah, everyone has to find their own way,” said Lonzo, who is in his fourth NBA season. “Obviously I took the more traditional route. He didn’t. But at the end of the day, we both ended up where we wanted to be. The hard work really pays off. It doesn’t matter who you are, if you think of anything you could do. I really believe it. It worked for me. It worked for him. “

Whether they play in the backyard, in Chino Hills, or any number of pickup games the two have been in over the years, what they wanted to achieve has never changed, LaMelo said.

“The goals and everything have always been the same,” said LaMelo. “We knew we were going to the league, being successful in the league and being in the Hall of Fame. That’s what we’re working for now.”