After mocking Lonzo Ball’s shooting form and telling his father to “keep my kids’ name out of your mouth” earlier this year, Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James has been fairly complimentary of the Los Angeles Lakers rookie, save for the time he threw shade at the kid’s Big Baller Brand shoes.

[Follow Ball Don’t Lie on social media: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Tumblr]

LeBron took in a Lakers game during the Las Vegas summer league, wished Lonzo happy birthday on Twitter and praised the No. 2 pick as a future “really, really good point guard in this league” when the 20-year-old knocked him off the podium as the youngest NBA player ever to record a triple-double.

The feeling was mutual. “My favorite player was LeBron James growing up. He was like our Michael Jordan,” Lonzo said last month. Even before then, the Lakers rookie said he would take the four-time MVP over Kobe Bryant. And just this week, Ball referred to James as “the best player in the world.”

So, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that LeBron came to Lonzo’s defense amid questions about whether the much-hyped rookie’s historically poor shooting will lower his NBA ceiling, all while debate rages over whether his father’s influence and ridiculous expectations set him up for failure.

“The kid hasn’t said anything,” James told ESPN.com’s Dave McMenamin. “It’s been everybody else. So, I love his humility. He goes out, every time someone asks him a question, he says, ‘This is not about me, man. I just want to win. I don’t care about what I did.’ I seen he had a triple-double one game and they lost. He was like, ‘I don’t care. We lost.’

“So, can I draw any parallel to my experience? I mean, of course. I guess when you’re drafted to a franchise, they want you to kind of be the savior. And it takes a while. I mean, listen, man, this guy is 20-something games into his pro career. S*** doesn’t happen [that fast]. Here it goes again, it goes back to my instant oatmeal [quote]: Everybody wants it right away. Can he play ball? Absolutely. The kid can play ball. Do guys want to play with him? Absolutely, because it’s a guy who is not about him. It’s about the success of the team. And he gives the ball up, and he passes the ball, and there’s energy behind the ball.”

This may only serve to fuel rumors of LeBron’s interest in joining the Lakers as a free agent this summer, but really it was just one much-ballyhooed player relating to another. “No one knows what he’s going to become. … Did anybody know that I would be the player I am?” LeBron asked ESPN.

(There were indications, certainly, since James appeared on the Sports Illustrated cover as a high school junior next to the headline: “The Chosen One,” but we understand his larger point.)

Just for fun, here are Lonzo’s numbers compared to LeBron’s through 26 games of their careers:

• Lonzo: 8.9 points (32.7 field goal percentage, 25.8 3-point percentage, 48.6 free-throw percentage), seven assists (against 2.5 turnovers), 6.9 rebounds and 2.4 combined blocks and steals in 33.1 minutes per game.

• LeBron: 18.7 points (42.1 field goal percentage, 34.2 3-point percentage, 75.6 free-throw percentage), six assists (against 3.6 turnovers), six rebounds and 2.0 combined blocks and steals in 40.2 minutes per game.

Save for the scoring, that’s probably a lot closer than you imagined, right? The Lakers are 10-16 almost a third of the way through Ball’s first season, while the Cavs were 7-19 during James’ first 26 games. This isn’t to say that Ball will live up to the hype and become one of the all-time greats, as LeBron did, but it’s too early to rule it out. LeBron did offer some advice for Lonzo about the roadmap he took:

“That s*** is tough,” James told ESPN.com, “and if you can’t focus in on the job at hand … You got to have no distractions. You can’t have no distractions when you’re trying to be great. You can block out a lot of s***, but you can’t have no distractions.

“There’s no such thing as a distraction on the road to greatness. There’s going to be so many people that try to throw you off kilter and try to throw your train off the rails. You just got to be like Seabiscuit. You know Seabiscuit? … Blinders.”

That’s easier said than done when your dad is publicly declaring you better than Stephen Curry, criticizing your coach, pulling your brother out of school following an international incident and getting into public spats with the president. Maybe sending the other Balls to Lithuania will help.

Lonzo will face LeBron for the first time in his career on Thursday night, when the Cavaliers host the Lakers in a nationally televised game. How’s that for a distraction?

– – – – – – –

Ben Rohrbach is a contributor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach