Lakers’ Brandon Ingram won’t rush weight gain

About 60 pounds separate Brandon Ingram and Julius Randle, so a one-on-one battle during practice this week naturally favored Randle.

Randle won the training camp battle at UC Santa Barbara, but the drill gave Ingram confidence.

“I grew up playing bigger guys all my life so it’s nothing different,” Ingram said. “Seeing bigger guys doesn’t scare me at all, it just makes me want to battle. Compete against those guys, bigger or smaller guys, it doesn’t matter. ...

“I think I held my own. He’s a big guy but I just try to use some of his weaknesses against him.”

When the Lakers drafted Ingram second overall, his weight became a point of concern from some. Questions arose about whether his 6-feet-9, 190-pound frame could handle the NBA. While Ingram did gain weight this summer, that won’t be a focus during his rookie year. Ingram and the Lakers are content to let his body develop at its own pace, and that patience might save his body from injuries.

On Friday, Philadelphia 76ers rookie Ben Simmons suffered a fracture in his right foot. The injury came just days after the No. 1 overall pick told reporters he had gained 33 pounds since leaving LSU.

Tim Grover, a longtime trainer who has worked with Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan and other stars, speculated on Twitter about a correlation between the injury and Simmons’ weight gain.

“Ben Simmons puts on 33 lbs, now a broken foot,” he said in a tweet. “Related? For sure. Athletes can’t add that much weight that quickly w/out impacting movement.”

The Lakers trainers talk with Ingram about the injury risk that comes with gaining weight too fast.

“It’s the one reason I tried to stop the little calorie thing I had going on,” said Ingram, who said after the draft that he was eating 5,000 calories a day to gain weight. “Just knowing that it’s going to be a process. Not trying to add weight too fast and knowing that it’s going to come over the years as my body matures.”

Right now Ingram is focusing on simply maintaining weight, rather than gaining it. He’ll postpone weight gain until the offseason.

And while he won’t be a starter for the Lakers right away, that shouldn’t be taken as an indictment of his size.

“I’m not nearly as concerned with his weight,” Lakers coach Luke Walton said. “I’m more focused on how he’s developing, how he’s growing into the NBA game. He’s a lot stronger than he appears.”

Staying competitive: Walton has injected a competitive element into every practice, with drills, games or scrimmages.

On Saturday the Lakers finished practice with a half-court scrimmage.

“We did a competition out of it where we gave each team five straight possessions,” Walton said. “Not only do we want them going hard, but to me it’s real important that you see what’s happening and you kind of adjust during a game. If you have five straight opportunities, you start to see how a team’s playing you, then you start talking amongst each other on the court. I think we accomplished that today. Guys were really going after each other. I think we learned that there’s so many layers to each play. I think we learned a lot of those layers today.”

Walton keeps a whiteboard on the practice court where he tracks which players win various drills.

“Competition level has been phenomenal,” he said. “It’s always a fine line. You don’t want it to get too aggressive out there. They’re doing a great job of respecting each other, but pushing each other. And fighting, trying to get wins.”

tania.ganguli@latimes.com

Follow Tania Ganguli on Twitter @taniaganguli