Who is LaVar Ball?
If watching ESPN or any other sports channel, people would have heard about LaVar Ball and his three sons: Lonzo, a rookie and second overall draft pick in the NBA, Liangelo, who is a freshman at UCLA, and Lamelo, who is one of the top high school basketball prospects in the United States.
LaVar Ball’s popularity is due to his outrageous claims, such as how he can beat Michael Jordan one on one, and how his son, Lonzo, is better than Stephen Curry, an all-star in the NBA with two championship rings. Senior Dhiren Charitar said the following about LaVar’s claims,
“He’s just doing that for attention and to bring hype to his sons, and he knows in the back of his mind that it’s not true,” Charitar said.
Some say LaVar has over hyped his sons and they can never meet this hype. Lonzo Ball, the oldest son is already receiving heavy criticism for under-performing in the NBA and not living up to what his father has said. LaVar has also said outrageous claims for his youngest son Lamelo who is going into his junior year of high school. LaVar has decided to pull Lamelo out of Chino Hills High School and homeschool him for his last two years of High School.
“I don’t want no distractions on Melo. So therefore I’m going to home-school him and make him the best basketball player ever,” Lavar said.
LaVar has been debates and altercations with some big names in sports and the media. This includes NBA superstar LeBron James, former player and member of Inside the NBA cast, Charles Barkley, and ESPN First Take commentator Stephen A Smith. These debates have only helped to grow LaVar’s popularity.
Junior Gabe Persad disagrees with LaVar’s claims.
“I think he is farfetched and I honestly think he does it for the attention but I think he’s a clown,” Persad said.
Will all of this attention, LaVar Ball has made his own brand of clothing and shoes called Big Baller Brand. This brand has shoes based off of his sons similar to how Nike and Under Armour make shoes based on famous athletes. LaVar’s brand has had its fair amount of criticism do to its high price tags, the highest costing shoe being 1,195 dollars and shirts costing upwards of 50 dollars.
