It's going to be hard to initially parse the eventual criticism of LaMelo from the clusterfuckery that was the whole Big Baller Brand/reality show/Lonzo kerfuffle from a couple of years back. There's a lot of baggage clinging to him and it's all waaaay more public than you usually see from college athletes, and I wonder how much of that will haunt him regardless of his performance over the next year.
Consider how often you hear about college athletes having "an attitude problem" or "questionable work ethic" or "basketball IQ", these things that aren't necessarily the easiest to parse from a distance. Normally those things, whether true or not, do end up having at least somewhat of an impact on the discussion surrounding a prospect, but in most cases they kinda fizzle out unless it becomes more pronounced in regards to the actual on court product. With LaMelo i feel like he already has significant ground to cover up, simply because of the preconceived notions formed by how messy and public his situation was the last time it was brought up in the news. It's going to be extremely easy for people to fall back on that narrative and stick to it, because it's already such an established talking point with regards to the chaos surround the Ball family. the same amount "maturity issues", "work ethic", etc. that you will have seen in countless other tremendous prospects who turned out to be fantastic pros could end up being weighed for more heavily in LaMelos case.
I think it's something that is worth keeping in mind as the year goes on and narratives and impressions are formed on the draft class.