Will LaVar Ball scare teams from drafting Lonzo Ball?
When Lonzo Ball takes the floor at the Golden One Center in Sacramento on Friday night, his UCLA Bruins set to face Kent State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, the NBA world will be watching the 19-year-old point guard as they have for so long now.
Yet it’s who they won’t be watching — or listening to, rather — that might surprise you: the boastful father of the possible No. 1 pick in the June draft, LaVar Ball.
For all the recent focus on LaVar and his one-man media tour — the endless string of interviews full of cocky claims and promises, coupled with insults of everyone from Stephen Curry to Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan — the consensus among executives who discussed the matter with USA TODAY Sports this week was his draft stock won’t be harmed by his father’s controversial style. As one general manager put it, and many other executives confirmed in various forms, “No one’s paying attention to Ball’s father.”
Because league rules prohibit teams from discussing prospects until they have committed to enter the draft, the executives spoke on the condition of anonymity.
It might be hard to believe, if only because LaVar is so overexposed at the moment, but they swear it’s true. Never mind his talk about how he’s going to package his sons — Lonzo, LiAngelo (a high school senior who is UCLAbound), and LaMelo (a high school sophomore who has committed to UCLA) — in a billion-dollar shoe deal with Nike, Adidas or Under Armour. Or the notion that you could put Curry, the NBA’s back-to-back MVP, on the Bruins and see a decline from Lonzo’s level of play. Or that LaVar, who averaged 2.2 points and 2.3 rebounds for Washington State during the 1987-88 season before transferring to Cal-State Los Angeles, said he could beat Jordan in a game of one-on-one in his hey-day. Or that Barkley, who was critical of LaVar’s outspoken ways, would have won an NBA championship “if (he) thought like me.”
The more important factor, the thing that might very well lead to him being taken before players like Markelle Fultz (Washington), Josh Jackson (Kansas) and Jayson Tatum (Duke) at the top of the June draft, is that Lonzo (14.6 points, 7.7 assists, 6.1 rebounds, 1.9 steals per game) shows all the signs of being a player who could fit right in with this special era of NBA point guards.
“Lonzo Ball is a game changer with his skill set and ability to make plays (that) one can’t teach,” one front office executive said.
Several executives reiterated Ball would be drafted in the top three regardless of his dad.
But as other executives noted, it would be a different story if Lonzo came with red flags when it comes to character. Instead, they see him play with a pass-first mentality that makes his teammates better on a Bruins team that has gone 29-4 this season. They take notice of the fact that he — unlike Jackson, who was suspended for the Jayhawks’ Big 12 tournament opener after being accused of damaging a woman’s car in December — doesn’t struggle with off-court issues and seems unfazed by his father’s personality. And as another general manager noted, there are worse things to worry about than NBA players whose parents might support them too much.
Said another executive: “Passing on the kid because of the father may not hold up well over time.”
As LaVar told USA TODAY Sports last week, it’s not as if his sons didn’t already know this side of his personality: “People say to my boys, ‘Hey man, you know your Daddy’s crazy?’And you know what they’re saying, ‘Tell us something we don’t know. He’s been crazy all our life. When we came out he was crazy.’ So whatever is on the outside, talking about us, it doesn’t matter. It does not matter.”
It certainly helps that personal branding has long since become an accepted part of today’s NBA. So when Lavar talks about his family’s “Big Baller Brand” company growing into something on par with the Jordan brand under Nike, it doesn’t scare teams off like it might have a few decades ago. Among the dozen executives who were contacted, only two expressed any belief that LaVar’s ways could negatively impact Lonzo’s draft standing. As one of them noted, the LaVar factor could come into play if a team is torn between him and another prospect when the draft buzzer is about to ring.
“That could be the thing that tilts the balance,” he said.