Keep your eye on the Ball

It was June 22nd, 2017, on a Thursday evening in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, when it happened. A young man by the name of Lonzo Ball was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers, thus solidifying his status as a basketball player of the NBA. He was drafted as the second overall pick, an objectively impressive feat. If you knew nothing about Lonzo Ball before this moment, you might think this is a straightforward story of making it to the big leagues. But his story is much more – and more complex – than perhaps we would wish for him.
Despite his obvious talent, Lonzo Ball isn’t “just” a decorated basketball player: to the public, he is the center of a media frenzy, the subject of a family sitcom (figuratively and literally) that took off like a rocket sometime in early 2017, back when he was simply a point guard on the UCLA basketball team, and a top draft prospect for NBA scouts.
But the truth is, the main source of the drama isn’t to the fault of Lonzo. In fact, the reason that the Ball family has such a topsy turvy public image is thanks for the most part to one person – LaVar Ball, Lonzo’s father.

“Big Baller Brand” Ball, as LaVar is known, is arguably just as famous as his newly drafted NBA player son Lonzo, but unlike his son, the the main reason for this is his mouth.
A hands-on father who is greatly concerned with the careers of children, Lavar Ball is a family man who seems to love his boy, Lonzo, and the rest of his sons (his other two boys, LiAngelo and LaMelo, are also young basketball stars on the rise), as well as his wife Tina. But some of the inflammatory comments he’s made on camera make us want to ask him, “If you truly want what’s best for your child, why would you say that?”
One such instant was when LaVar has asserted that his son Lonzo is a better basketball player than the two-time NBA Most Valuable Player Stephen Curry, essentially pitting the two players one against the other.
On the one hand, braggadocious comments like this make LaVar out to be writing checks that son may not be able to cash. On the other hand, perhaps it is this confidence in him that helped bring his son to the Los Angeles Lakers. LaVar definitely believes in the latter, and hopes to help his son ascend to become one of the NBA greats – with all LaVar having to do is “speak it into existence.”
[post_page_title]Mr. Lonzo Ball[/post_page_title]
Described by NBA legend Magic Johnson as a “transcendental” basketball player, Lonzo Ball, the L.A. Lakers rookie point guard out of Chino Hills, California, has been turning heads with his impressive passing and strong leadership skills on the court. And that might have been all there is to it, if not for his father, LaVar, who’s been both the main propeller behind his son’s success and the instigator of a negative media storm. But who is this father-son duo, and what makes the Ball family so fascinating?