Background and career
LaVar Christopher Ball (born October 23, 1967) is an American businessman who is the co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of sports apparel company Big Baller Brand and founder of the now defunct Junior Basketball Association (JBA). He is the father of professional basketball guards Lonzo and LaMelo Ball, the latter active for the Minnesota Timberwolves, while LiAngelo, his second son, is signed with Def Jam as a hip hop recording artist. Ball played basketball and football while at Canoga Park High School, going on to play basketball at the collegiate level for West Los Angeles College, Washington State and Cal State Los Angeles. He also played football at Long Beach City College for a season. He had a brief professional career as a tight end with the London Monarchs of the World League of American Football. He was a practice squad member of the New York Jets and Carolina Panthers in 1995, but never played an official regular season game in the National Football League. Following a series of bold statements in the spring of 2017, Ball began repeatedly making national sports headlines. His early remarks included saying that his son Lonzo was better than Stephen Curry and claiming that he himself could defeat Michael Jordan one-on-one in basketball. He was subject to both praise and criticism as he continued making similar comments, some of which involved his company, Big Baller Brand. Ball has made several appearances on national TV and has routinely drawn attention from major sports media outlets. He has also been in the spotlight for his criticism of his sons' teams, most notably the Lakers for their treatment of Lonzo, as well as for his exchange with U.S. president Donald Trump after LiAngelo was arrested in China for shoplifting.
Ball was born on October 23, 1967, to Anderson and Maria Ball, and was brought up in South Los Angeles, California. He is considered the middle child of his family. He has four brothers, named LaFrance, LaValle, LaRenzo, and LaShon, as well as two sisters. Ball attended Canoga Park High School in Canoga Park, Los Angeles, where he was a quarterback on the football team and a forward in basketball. He stood 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) and weighed 250 lbs (113 kg) by college. Aside from sports, Ball majored in criminal justice at college and had hopes of being a U.S. Marshal. His favorite basketball player when growing up at the time was Charles Barkley. Ball first began playing college basketball at West Los Angeles College in the Western State Conference during the 1985–1986 season. During his freshman season, Ball grabbed a total of 316 rebounds to break the school record. In the season opener in 1986, he recorded 33 points and 18 rebounds against Porterville College. For the 1986–1987 season, he averaged 22.2 points and 12.0 rebounds. Ball then transferred to NCAA Division I Washington State and became a starting forward. In 26 games for the Cougars, however; he averaged only 2.2 points, 2.3 rebounds, and 1.0 assists per game. After one season, Ball transferred again to Cal State Los Angeles, which competed in the NCAA Division II, playing alongside three of his four brothers. During the 1989-1990 season, Ball averaged 15.8 points and 8.9 rebounds and was named to the All-CCAA first team.
Following college, Ball was invited to a football tryout and eventually made a return to the sport. After finishing his college basketball career, he played a single year of college football at Long Beach City College as a tight end. On May 1, 1994, Ball signed with the New York Jets of the National Football League (NFL) as a defensive end. Ball returned to the Jets on March 7, 1995, as a tight end and was then sent to the London Monarchs of the World League of American Football (WLAF) the same year. In the 1995 season for the Monarchs, Ball had zero catches, but did record 28 yards in kick returns. According to his teammate Kenny McEntyre, Ball was "garbage". During his NFL career, Ball was also a part of the practice squads of both the Jets and Carolina Panthers, remaining with the latter team until late November 1995, albeit with no games played due to injury. His football career would come to an end after said injury, and he would retire to initially be a personal trainer in California.
Although LaVar Ball initially received minimal public attention at the start of 2016, his sons gave him a media platform that he would begin to use increasingly, starting at the end of the year. In July 2015, Ball and his sons made national sports headlines when Gary Parrish of CBS Sports wrote a feature story about the Ball family. In a March 2016 interview with MaxPreps, he first began displaying his confident personality to the public. When asked who Lonzo plays like, he described his son as "Magic Johnson with a jumper." The family continued rising in popularity after SLAM magazine featured them in an article in August 2016. Subsequently, Ball himself rapidly rose in profile through a series of incredible comments about his children, such as on November 26, 2016, when in a TV interview he guaranteed that UCLA, spearheaded by Lonzo, would win the 2017 NCAA Division I Tournament. On December 14, Ball predicted that all three of his sons would be one-and-done prospects for the NBA draft by playing only one year of college basketball. Many of Ball's eccentric claims have involved well-known basketball players. In early March 2017, he said that he viewed Lonzo as a better player than Stephen Curry, the NBA Most Valuable Player in 2015 and 2016. UCLA all-time leading scorer Don MacLean called the comments "outrageous," and many bloggers ridiculed Ball for them. Ball has also stated that he believes his eldest son is "the best player in the world," specifically comparing him with NBA MVPs LeBron James and Russell Westbrook. Kyle Boone of CBS Sports responded: "There's no way in the world Lonzo would be taking down LeBron or Westbrook in any form of basketball right now." On March 13, 2017, Ball said in an interview with Josh Peter of USA Today: "Back in my heyday, I would kill Michael Jordan one-on-one," saying Jordan could only foul him if he did a jump hook, that Jordan could not stop him one-on-one, that Jordan was slower. Ball was widely mocked for making the statement due to having averaged only 2.2 points per game while playing basketball at Washington State. His comments comparing himself with Jordan resulted in a significant increase in media attention. Following his claim, he appeared on the ESPN show First Take, in which he argued with Stephen A. Smith about his comments on Jordan. As of March 2020, a YouTube video of the segment has received more than 6 million views. In June 2018, Ball later mentioned that he could take on Kobe Bryant one-on-one also, although he admitted that it would mainly be due to Kobe's injury that ultimately took him out of the game in 2016. In 2020 Ball said on Shannon Sharpe's "Club Shay Shay" podcast that he would play a one-on-one match against Jordan on pay-per-view for $200 million. On December 3, 2020, Bleacher Report posted a video of LaVar Ball playing Michael Jordan in a simulated first to 21, one-on-one match in NBA 2K21, the simulation showed Jordan beating Ball, 22–3, with Jordan going on a 12–0 run against Ball during the game.
On November 7, 2017, days before UCLA opened the 2017–18 season in Shanghai, China, Ball's son LiAngelo and teammates Cody Riley and Jalen Hill were arrested for shoplifting from a high-end shopping center near their team hotel in Hangzhou. The players were accused of stealing sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store in the mall. Although LiAngelo faced a fine and three to ten years in prison if convicted, LaVar largely downplayed the situation. Upon an alleged request from U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration, who were on a 12-day visit to Asia at the time, to General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping, the UCLA players were released from custody. Trump then tweeted on November 15, "Do you think the three UCLA Basketball Players will say thank you President Trump? They were headed for 10 years in jail!" According to a timeline published by ESPN, Chinese authorities had dropped shoplifting charges against the players on November 7, 2017, five days before Trump got involved. On November 17, LaVar Ball responded to Trump: "Who? What was he over there for? Don't tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out." Two days later, Trump labeled Ball "very ungrateful" and stated that he "should have left them in jail" in a series of tweets. On November 20, Ball featured in a 20-minute interview with Chris Cuomo on CNN, where he continued refusing to thank Trump. In the following days, Trump reasserted his role in releasing the UCLA players, while likening Ball to a "poor man's version of Don King" and calling him an "ungrateful fool." In the midst of the exchange, UCLA suspended LiAngelo and his teammates indefinitely, after their public apology, in which they thanked Trump. The decision led to LiAngelo's withdrawal from the UCLA basketball program on December 4, following LaVar's desires. Following a March 3, 2018 ESPN report that Trump had no involvement in the incident, Ball wrote on Twitter, "Thank you for what again @realDonaldTrump ?" Ball also mentioned that if he was going to thank anyone during that ordeal, it would be towards the Chinese leader instead, as well as claimed the President was trying to ride the coattails of the Ball family at that time. Ball was described as "a master troll with an appetite for attention even bigger than" Trump, having earned more than $13 million in ad value according to Apex MG Analytics. In the aftermath of President Trump's tweet talking about LeBron James and his interview with CNN journalist Don Lemon on August 5, 2018, Ball mentioned to reporters at TMZ that the president is a racist and that "everybody knows that. It's not a secret." He also encouraged his sons to be political in the event it's necessary for them to do so, live their lives to the fullest, be passionate at the sport of basketball, and love everyone that's nice to them. However, on February 25, 2019, when talking about the U.S.A.'s relationship with China, President Trump reaffirmed his stance on the situation with LiAngelo and the two other players, stating he conversed with CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping about the college students and that LaVar's consultant would have gone nowhere in their conversations. Ball later stated he wouldn't vote for Trump at all in the 2020 Presidential elections. After Trump lost the 2020 United States presidential election LaVar suggested Trump lost the election because of their feud.
In November 2017, Ball criticized Los Angeles Lakers head coach Luke Walton for what he thought was a wrong approach to coaching his eldest son, Lonzo. Ball mentioned that his son was focusing on getting the victory for his team in a November loss to the Phoenix Suns, before stating that the coaching is making him appear soft. Later that same month, after an overtime loss to the defending champion Golden State Warriors, Ball criticized Walton again in a post-game interview with ESPN. Ball claimed that the game should not have gone to overtime and that Lonzo's teammate, Julius Randle, should have passed the ball to his son for the potential game-winning play and that the head coach should not have called a timeout late in the fourth quarter. Starting in December, the Lakers would enforce a new rule, dubbed by employees at the Staples Center to be the "LaVar Ball Rule," to forbid media to talk with the team's family members at home games. On December 12, 2017, the Lakers' front office met with LaVar, asking him to tone down the criticisms on their head coach and help create a more positive environment for his son to prosper in. However, less than a month later while in Lithuania in January 2018, Ball noticed that even though he considers the Lakers to be a good team, he thought they were no longer playing for their coach, resulting in them having the worst record in the Western Conference at the time. This resulted in not only Luke Walton responding that the Lakers have "100% confidence" in his abilities, but also other NBA coaches like Rick Carlisle, Stan Van Gundy, Jeff Hornacek, Gregg Popovich, and Steve Kerr responding to Ball's comments as well. Other Lakers players like Kyle Kuzma also voiced their support for Luke Walton, with Lonzo saying that nothing's really going to stop his father from being who he is. On January 13, 2018, Lakers owner Jeanie Buss posted a Tweet showing her support for Walton alongside general manager Rob Pelinka, with Magic Johnson giving huge support for their head coach after their fourth straight win since Ball's latest comments after originally having a 9-game losing streak at the time. However, Ball would show some respect towards Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka on the situation, noting they're down to Earth with him while also noting the problems with the media industry as a whole. Ball would ultimately end his quibbles with Walton on June 13, 2018, where he mentions he's a good coach that just needed to figure things out during the previous season.
