Brandon Ingram has taken up boxing with Jerry Stackhouse to get ready for his second Lakers season

It might officially be a bad idea to make fun of Lakers forward Brandon Ingram.

Plenty has been written about the unorthodox training methods Brandon Ingram has been using to get ready for his second season with the Los Angeles Lakers, but he may have posted the most unexpected one yet when he revealed on Instagram that he’s boxing with his mentor Jerry Stackhouse:

Ingram joins Kristaps Porzingis, Joel Embiid and Damian Lillard among NBA players who have taken to boxing to get an offseason workout in recent years, and while Iman Shumpert’s presence on that list means it isn’t a surefire path to success, maybe Ingram can be more like the first three.

And while boxing could do functional things for Ingram on the court — help with his functional strength, quickness and footwork — it also might mean one practical thing for his development off of it: He isn’t going to get roasted by his teammates on social media anymore:

It’s at this moment that I’d like to take a second and just say “Hey, Brandon. So I guess you saw the ‘Slender Man’ video, huh? I just want to apologize again and say that Anthony Irwin made me do it. Yes, I can message you his address off thread.”

This is also a good way to ward off cheap fouls at the rim — shouts to Justise Winslow — because combined with Ingram’s stature as a third-year player now, his newfound ability to go from “quiet Laker everyone is forgetting about” to “meet me in Temecula” real quick might just keep people from taking as many liberties with contact when he’s airborne around the cup.

Between this and Ingram’s other work with trainer Micah Lancaster this offseason (as well as playing alongside LeBron James now) it seems like he could be in for a breakout campaign. Training camp can’t get here soon enough.

Unless Brandon wants to kick my ass, that is, in which case I’m just going to send Anthony with my press credential.

Brandon can find the blogger he’s mad at on Twitter at @AnthonyIrwinLA, and the rest of you can follow Harrison at @hmfaigen.