LaMelo Ball became the first high schooler ever to have his own signature shoe on Thursday when Big Baller Brand announced the Melo Ball 1.
The first question that came to mind when LaVar Ball’s company announced a high school player’s signature shoe was pretty obvious: what happens to the shoe, and the player, when they go to college. Will the NCAA allow a player profiting of their name in high school to become a student athlete?
For LaVar Ball, Big Baller Brand’s owner and LaMelo’s father, the question is irrelevant.
“Like I say, who cares?” Ball said in a phone interview with Uproxx on Thursday afternoon. “I’m not worried about them. The stuff that I do, I ain’t gotta ask permission from the NCAA about eligibility or nothing. I just go ahead and do it.”
Ball gave ESPN a similar quote to ESPN regarding LaMelo’s $395 signature shoe. LaVar acknowledged that there may be “consequences” for the shoe’s existence, but also claimed that the sports governing body shouldn’t have an impact on anything LaMelo does while in high school.
“I’ll suffer the consequences, whatever they may be,” Ball said. “It shouldn’t be nothing at all. The NCAA does not have anything on my brand or what I’m doing with my family. They have no effect on that.”
The decision to produce a shoe for a high school junior is as much a marketing opportunity for LaMelo as it is the chance to make a rare kind of history. Ball said he didn’t want to “rush” a shoe for his middle son, LiAngelo, but that giving LaMelo his own signature shoe gives him something other basketball stars were unable to obtain.
“UCLA got him locked up. The little kid is locked up. Lonzo was locked up last year. But see the good thing about having three sons? I always got two on deck. So when they was locking up Lonzo last year I always had Melo and ‘Gelo on the team. You don’t want to rush no shoe. Lonzo had the first shoe. It couldn’t go to ‘Gelo.
“LeBron. Kobe. All those big names. Michael Jordan. Nobody ever had a signature shoe in high school,” Ball said. “That’s one of the baddest moves ever.”
Ball said LiAngelo, a freshman at UCLA this year, is “locked up” by UCLA and therefore Big Baller Brand couldn’t put out a signature shoe for him. But LaVar said it’s coming.
“You can’t do nothing with ‘Gelo because he’s in their system already,” Ball said. “But Melo is out. He’s running free right now. And in April, shoot, ‘Gelo will be running free.”
