Stay in Your Lane | Lonzo Ball

Chapter 43

Izzy
Zo and I were enjoying spending all of our free time with each other. It wasn't forced. We were always finding time. I stayed the night with him following his ex's surprise appearance and our steamy make out session. The following night he stayed the night with me in my room after spending two hours knocking out of homework.

He was so sweet, funny and fine as hell. He was continuing to grow on me. It crazy to think that a few months ago I wasn't giving him the time of day and saw him just as an annoying freshman. Once I stopped being stubborn and got to know him, I realized that he was a pretty awesome guy.

Early Thursday morning, he had to leave for a conference game at Colorado that evening. As soon as he left, I was missing him. More confirmation that I really liked Zo.

After practice ended late that afternoon, I made sure to eat dinner and hurry to get back to my room and watch his game. He had a pretty good night on the floor. Of course, he was his toughest critic and went through all of things he could've done better when we FaceTimed once he was back at the hotel. It was another commonality we shared.

Although they didn't have a game Friday, they stayed on the road for their game Saturday against Utah.

He watched our home game versus Oregon State from his hotel room Friday night. I had a rough start because my shots weren't falling , but finished the game wit 18 points, 10 assist and 12 rebounds. Zo had another great outing the following night and even had one of his dunks make Sportscenters Top Ten highlight reel.

Despite me missing him, I kept my focus on our game Sunday. He'd be coming back just in time to see me play, which had me even more pumped up and excited.

Upon waking up around eight o'clock Sunday morning, I went through my normal home game day routine. First was a light run to get my blood flowing, a shower, walking to the student union and eating a carb heavy breakfast. Once I had a full stomach, I went to the training room to receive rehab on my calf strains with the help of stem treatment.

With two hours remaining until tip-off at noon, I plugged in my headphones and went out to the gym to get some shoot around time in by myself before everyone started to trickle in. Anything from Drake, Future and Migos always got me hyped and in game mode

Zo: Our flight was delayed until 3:30...I'm gonna miss the game 😩

Izzy: seriously???

Zo: yeah, but I'm gonna watch on my phone. Play hard. I'll see you when we get back.

Izzy: Okay. Be safe

Just as my reply went through, Jordan gave me the heads up that coach was walking in. Me, along with a few of my teammates stuff our devices into our gym bags.

After Coach Close's pregame talk, we broke it down, filed out of the locker room and lined up in the tunnel for our runout.

As we went through warmups, I spotted mom, dad and Gracie in the crowd sitting about five rows up from the floor behind my team's bench. It was good to see them and I couldn't wait to give my baby sister a big hug after the game.

Oregon sought to come steal a conference win on our home court. This was a match we needed to win to keep us in contention of being number one in the PAC-12 after our loss at Washington a week ago.

Things started off well for us. We got out to a 12-0 lead off of a steal and lay-up by Jordan, Monique hit a shot from the elbow, a long two pointer was nailed by Kari and two back to back three pointers in the corner by me.

Oregon called a timeout. We ran to our bench super hyped. Our fans were going crazy.

We came out of the timeout and maintained our dominance throughout the first quarter, holding Oregon to 7 points while we put up 25.