Duke Blue Devils: Brandon Ingram and Weight

Former Duke Blue Devils star Brandon Ingram is now having to deal with the realities of weight gain in the NBA.

When the Duke Blue Devils unleashed Brandon Ingram last year, they were aware that they were basically going the full Villanova. That was fine on the offensive end. On the defense side of things, the Blue Devils used Ingram’s quickness and wingspan to match with folks down low. He was expected to be a banger down there.

That is because Ingram just wasn’t very heavy. He was rail thin, playing somewhere south of two hundred at his 6’9” and 7’4” arm span frame. There were some rumors that he was playing rather far south of that number. Anyways, Ingram was going to need to bulk up to take the toll of being a small forward in the NBA.

Bulking up is a process I have never fully understood. Jordan Gross lives quite happily at 230 lbs or a little more despite playing at 300 lbs. People would gain something like forty pounds, sometimes in one off-season, during their collegiate football careers.

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Part of it is massive calorie consumption. Dwayne Johnson consumes 4,000 calories a day to keep up his physical regimen. The Lakers are trying to get that part down with Ingram. According to reports from Baxter Holmes of ESPN, Ingram describes his own diet as sickening. This was part of a report that Holmes did on the perceptions of Ingram’s weight.

At face you can understand the concern of the Lakers. They are trying to protect their investment in Ingram. However there is also a basketball school of thought that says that you let a player be who he is. Ingram has played no professional games. He is playing a more perimeter oriented position. Maybe he should be allowed to grow into it normally?

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Holmes reporting included an interview with physical trainer Tim Grover. Grover pointed out that basketball players are built on agility and balance. You can’t simply shove weight onto one and expect that they will be able to play quite the same way right away. Grover also believed that weight gain should be a slow process to let the body feel around itself.

Is there anyone to back up Grover’s ideas? He pointed to Kevin Durant, another guy who came into the league skilled but thin. Durant now plays around 235 lbs, but he started at 210 lbs and put the weight on slowly over his entire career to get to that point.

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What was odd about Holmes’ article to me was how it finished. It seemed to start as a criticism about people handled Ingram’s weight and I expected by the end to discover the Lakers were doing it all wrong. In the end though, the Lakers seem to be closer to Grover’s opinion than one might expect. So I think that Ingram is in good hands.