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 play overseas and make some real money?
"You get more NBA exposure in the [G] League — that's why I chose it [instead] of going overseas," Ingram told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in an interview around that time. Ingram said something similar to Jones, who coached the guard in college at American University.
"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. Tuesday night, gray hair and all, Ingram finally checked into an NBA game, with his battered Lakers hosting Houston.
Did Ingram drain a long three-pointer early in the second quarter as his teammates went wild on the bench? Of course he did.
Did he then, improbably, score 11 points in seven minutes? Did the Staples Center crowd chant "MVP" at this 32-year old rookie? Was he L.A.'s leading scorer at halftime? Yes, yes and yes.
"Andre was seemingly determined to make the NBA," said Jones, who now coaches at Old Dominion. "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 just outside of Richmond. "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.
Ingram 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. He played 384 games in that developmental circuit, an entire career's worth of trips to places like Sioux Falls and Des Moines.
And through those years in the development league, first with the Utah Flash then with the South Bay Lakers, Ingram steadily improved until his style 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, Lonzo Ball missed Tuesday's game with a knee injury, and Kyle Kuzma was out with a bum ankle — finally delivered Ingram this chance a decade in the making.
"It was all the emotions you'd think," Ingram said before Tuesday's game. "It was joy, it was, I don't know, vindication. It just felt great all the way around. It was a wonderful moment."
And it lived up to all the pregame hype; Ingram made his first four shots, including three from long range, while adding three rebounds and three blocks within his first 20 minutes of NBA action.
Ingram had supplemented his G League salary with odd jobs like coaching prospects and tutoring math, he said Tuesday, according to ESPN. He described his under-the-radar career as "a joy," and said he has no plans to stop playing any time soon. After Tuesday's performance, why would he?
"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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