LaVar Ball has been telling anyone who’ll listen all about his master plan to eventually get all three of his basketball-playing sons on the same NBA team. And if Lonzo‘s current team, the Los Angeles Lakers, can’t or won’t make that happen, then he’s made it expressly clear that he’s more than happy to ply his sons’ wares someplace else.
Despite betraying a fundamental misunderstanding of how free agency, and NBA contracts in general, work, there are still plenty of lingering questions about whether either LiAngelo or LaMelo are even NBA-caliber players at this point. That they are currently on the other side of the world competing against questionable talent is another topic entirely.
Given LaVar’s interminable verbal posturing, it’s hard to put much stock in anything he says. That’s why even his own son thinks it’s hardly worth responding to. Here’s what he had to say when asked for his reaction to this father’s latest comments.
“No reaction,” Lonzo said of his father’s threat. “I always just play. He always talks. It’s always been the same way.”
Lakers president Magic Johnson likewise doesn’t seem too preoccupied with it. Magic said recently that he has a “special relationship” with LaVar and had made it a point to offer his mentorship to the young Lakers point guard who is in a similar position as he was back in the 80s.
Lonzo, of course, has to strike a careful balance between being loyal to the team that currently employs him and holds his future in their hands and not totally undermining what his father says. So far, he’s done a relatively serviceable job of both.
(ESPN)
