Jeff Jones, the coach and confidant, tried to put it gently to Andre Ingram, his beloved former player.
It had been a few great years in the NBA development league. Ingram was on the way to becoming the leading scorer in the history of the (now defunct) Utah Flash. He was a leader in the locker room and a respected basketball talent around the world.
But NBA teams weren’t calling, and Ingram wasn’t getting any younger.
The NBA dream might not happen, Jones tried to tell him. Why not go overseas to play and make some real money?
“You get more NBA exposure in the [G] League — that’s why I chose it ahead of going overseas,” Ingram told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in an interview around the same time. Jones, who coached Ingram in college at American University and now coaches at Old Dominion, said Ingram told him something similar.
“I might make more money in one month overseas than in five months here,” Ingram said. “The monetary incentive isn’t that great. … It’s all about the exposure.”
After a decade in the G League and a year in Australia, it wasn’t the exposure that landed Ingram, 32, an NBA contract at last. More likely, it was the simple drumbeat of persistence.
The Los Angeles Lakers signed the Richmond native on Monday for the last two games of the regular season.
“Andre was seemingly determined to make the NBA,” Jones said. “He liked the idea of that.”
“It couldn’t have happened to a finer person,” said George Lancaster, who coached Ingram at Highland Springs High. “It shows persistence, determination, core values. It represents what can happen to you when you have that call.”
Well, that, and a refined three-point shot.
He shot 38.5 percent from three in college. His strength was attacking the rim and a solid midrange game, Jones said. He still averaged 15.2 points and 4.8 rebounds his senior season at AU.
“He was our best player through the course of his career,” Jones said.
But Ingram went undrafted by the NBA out of college and was selected in the seventh round of the G League draft, where he became one of the NBA’s best prospects to never get called up.
And through those years in the development league, first with the Utah Flash then with the South Bay Lakers, Ingram steadily improved until his game suited an NBA game that includes more three-pointers, more fast breaks and less defense.
His last three years in the G League, Ingram shot better than 49 percent beyond the arc. His 47.5 percent clip this season is the best in the G League.
The happy coincidence of the season’s end, his elevated play and injuries to some of the Lakers’ stars — guard Isaiah Thomas is out for the year, and Lonzo Ball likely won’t play either with a knee injury — has finally awarded Ingram a chance more than a few years in the making.
“He’s probably the finest young man I’ve ever coached in 50 years of coaching,” Lancaster said. “It’s so prophetic that he would have this opportunity.”
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