Lakers’ Brandon Ingram plays his best when he’s angry

Occasionally something changes inside Brandon Ingram, and often he doesn’t even know it’s happening.

He enters a new frame of mind. An aggressive, confident one.

“I don’t think I’m thinking at all,” Ingram said. “Just another zone. Just doing everything I can do, trust my teammates, try to get a stop on defense. [Have a] mentality where I block everything out and worry about everything in between those lines.”

It happened Wednesday night during the Lakers’ 102-99 overtime win against the Washington Wizards. Ingram’s late-game play helped the Lakers reach overtime. He finished with a team-high 19 points on eight-for-16 shooting. Ingram also had 10 rebounds, three assists, a steal, four turnovers and a blocked shot.

Lakers coach Luke Walton noticed a change in Ingram after a minor scuffle with Wizards forward Kelly Oubre Jr. He said it caused Ingram to elevate what had been a mediocre game.

Ingram chuckled when he heard Walton’s theory.

“I think that could be part of it,” Ingram said. “… Just basketball. Just got a little physical. Couple words said back and forth.”

Since Ingram has been in Los Angeles, his coaches have noticed that when he gets angry he plays better. It brings out an aggressiveness that isn’t always there.

Ingram’s demeanor has been the subject of much scrutiny since the Lakers drafted him second overall in 2016.

“Sometimes as a player I don’t even notice it sometimes,” Ingram said. “I may look lethargic at some times and I don’t even notice it.”

There, the coaching staff can help.

“We just continue to bring it up, make it something that we point out when he is not playing [aggressively], point it out when he is playing like that,” Walton said. “For him to have the awareness and hopefully recognize it himself where he doesn’t need us to. Besides that we can yell at him, pull him out of the game, make him [mad] at us, there’s ways to manipulate situations to make players angry. If he doesn’t find that awareness, we’ll make him hate us until he does.”

That aggressive mentality could help Ingram turn into something else the Lakers have sought — a closer.

“I hope to be,” Ingram said, when asked if he could be the Lakers’ closer.

Said Walton: “He definitely wants it, 100% he wants it. Some people you feel like they say they want it but in their eyes you can tell they are saying it because they are supposed to say it. Brandon, he truly wants those moments.”

Lost in the more tense moments after Wednesday’s game was the early effort put forth by Lakers forward Larry Nance Jr.

Nance finished with a career-high tying 18 points and he also had 10 rebounds. Nance played 24 minutes, all of them in the first three quarters.

Since the preseason, Nance has been starting at power forward, after a competition with Julius Randle. Rookie Kyle Kuzma also made a play for the role. Randle and Kuzma got more time late in the game. Randle finished with 11 points and nine rebounds in 19:29, making five of seven shots. Kuzma finished with 15 points in 34 minutes.

What makes Lonzo Ball special is his ability to make scoring passes.

In his first four NBA games, Ball has showcased that skill.

Heading into Thursday’s games, Ball ranked fourth in the league in assists a game after Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook, Washington’s John Wall and Houston’s James Harden. Ball’s nine assists per game is tied with LeBron James.

Wednesday was Ball’s second straight game with 10 or more assists. Ball has also grabbed at least eight rebounds in all four games to start the season.

LAKERS TONIGHT

VS. TORONTO

When: 7:30

On air: TV: Spectrum SportsNet, Spectrum Deportes; Radio: 710, 1330

Update: Up next for Lonzo Ball in a tough stretch of point guards he’ll face is Toronto’s Kyle Lowry. The Raptors come into Staples Center for the third game of a six-game trip. Toronto opened the trip with losses to San Antonio and Golden State.

tania.ganguli@latimes.com

Follow Tania Ganguli on Twitter @taniaganguli