LaVar biggest Baller in JBA hoops league
Dan Wolken: LaVar Ball phenomenon elusive thing to get our arms around
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — The last time the Big Baller himself was here just a few weeks ago, they say the line was out the door of the shoe store and around the side of the strip mall that sits just off Interstate 85 in the northeast suburbs of Atlanta. For four hours, supposedly, the place was jam-packed with people buying Big Baller Brand Tshirts and getting their pictures taken with LaVar Ball and his sons because there’s always a bigger crowd when LiAngelo and LaMelo are around.
On Tuesday, however, LaVar’s return to Atlanta in conjunction with his barnstorming basketball league was met with a bit less fanfare. In fact, 30
minutes before Ball was scheduled to arrive — without his sons, this time — there were only about a dozen people waiting outside the Sole Play boutique, nearly all of them teenagers from the suburbs.
“I’m just going to get an autograph and troll LaVar,” said 16-year old Alex Parkman. “Big Burglar Brand!”
Two years into his worldwide fame, the LaVar Ball phenomenon remains an elusive thing to fully get our arms around.
He’s sparred publicly with the president. He’s starred in a reality show. He’s said so many outrageous things in the mainstream media that his proclamations now barely generate an eye roll.
He took his two younger sons to play professional basketball in Lithuania and then yanked them out before the end of the season.
He started the Junior Basketball Association this summer.
And, of course, he sells Big Baller Brand apparel and shoes for prices most people can’t afford.
At some point in all that, LaVar became so ubiquitous that the entire reason anyone cared about him in the first place — the talent of his oldest son, Lonzo — became kind of irrelevant. He was a brand on his own.
And yet it was hard to ignore the juxtaposition Tuesday of all his star power and pop culture appeal against the reality of him taking selfies and Snapchat stories with a few dozen 16-year-olds before going to a basketball game in a near-empty arena to promote a league that feels rather small time at this early stage and almost certainly isn’t going to revolutionize the way kids go from high school to the pros.
Teenage fans main audience
“The media always messes it up,” said Nick Tobon, a high school junior. “He’s a way different dude.”
From Tobon’s perspective, it was hard to disagree. After Ball arrived at the shop 30 minutes late, stepping out of a silver Yukon to cheers of “LaVar!” from a crowd that grew to 25 or so, he settled into a table to the right of another table that had stacks of shirts and hats with his “BBB” logo.
For every customer — mostly white, all but a handful under 18 — he shared a bright smile, a handshake and an occasional “What’s going on big time? How you doin’?” He was warm and patient. He answered questions and took picture after picture. Only when someone wanted him to say something for a Snapchat or Instagram video did the bombastic LaVar we see on television come to life.
This went on for about 90 minutes, interrupted only when someone with a video camera marked with TMZ’s logo came in to get him on camera to ask about his new grandson and, oddly, the vandalism of LeBron James murals in Los Angeles.
“Lonzo’s all homegrown,” Lavar said. “They ain’t gonna do that to L.A.’s finest.”
By his standards, it was pretty tame stuff. But eventually, the flow of customers petered out. So with no more autographs to sign or pictures to take, eventually the kids just surrounded him. What occurred from there was part retelling of the Ball family story, part explanation of how Lonzo and LeBron were going to play together and part sports economics class that touched on everything from Tiger Woods’ name licensed to restaurants to how the shoe companies control so much about the marketing of NBA stars.
“Nobody has the freedom Lonzo and the Ball boys have!” he declared.
When it was over, the 16-year-olds who had been convinced they were going to troll LaVar were utterly charmed, convinced he was one of the smartest people they’d ever met and that everything they knew about him from television was wrong.
“The guy’s unique because he’s trying to branch off from the main Michael Jordan, LeBron, Kyrie signing with Nike,” said 16-year-old Sebastian Granados. “He’s doing his own thing, and by the way and manner he’s doing it, he’s creating buzz for his business. It’s interesting to meet a guy who’s so unique like him at this level. He’s a down-to-earth guy.”
Games streamed on Facebook
Ball politely declined to be interviewed for this story, citing USA TODAY coverage of him that he deemed too negative. His business partner, Alan Foster, predicted that would happen while ticking off the names of a few other media outlets Ball wasn’t too happy with these days.
So who does he like talking to these days, I asked?
“Big Baller Media,” Foster said. And, hey, maybe that’s enough. But the interesting part for Ball is whether he can turn this potential marketing machine, which has tentacles in a bunch of different things, into something long lasting. Ultimately, his core fan base probably isn’t someone like 30year-old Terry Seals, who isn’t a huge fan of the antics but loves “his movement, what he’s doing for all people who want to ball” with the creation of the JBA, which has promised $3,000 a month salaries this season.
No, my guess is his core constituency is mostly made up of the 16- and 17-yearolds who relate to LaMelo, which would work out pretty well if LaVar could fig- ure out a way for him to stay 16 rather than grow into an adult who, odds are, won’t be good enough to play in the NBA but likely won’t be spending much time in the JBA either.
For now, you can see how the JBA is working, kind of. When LaMelo plays, the league undeniably is getting big numbers on Facebook, drawing upward of 600,000 streaming viewers. When he doesn’t play, it’s more like 100,000.
When I asked Foster how many people were attending in person, he said they’re not keeping count and don’t really care, which makes sense given that the prices to get in — in Atlanta, it was $40 a ticket to get in the door and
$100 to sit close — are practically insulting.
“I can get Hawks tickets for $20,” said Umer Godil, 19.
So it was no surprise that fewer than
150 people were in the stands for the first game Tuesday, and some of those were giveaways to people who bought merchandise from the pop-up store.
Foster also defended the quality of play, which has been notable due to its, uh, interesting box scores where both teams frequently score well into the
100s.
That’s not necessarily the league’s fault. Everything about the operation seems fairly professionally done, and with music playing constantly (except during free throws), you barely notice how empty the arena is. The bottom line, however, is that most of the players just aren’t particularly talented; most of them would be Division II type recruits for college basketball, and the money being offered by the JBA isn’t going to compete with an NCAA Division I scholarship for most people.
But even if there wasn’t much of a circus around Ball on Tuesday, suggesting his prominence might be fading, at least he still seems capable of creating happy customers.