A father who didn’t think a couple high school basketball coaches were qualified to coach his sons isn’t stopping with the professionals.
It took less than five weeks into Lonzo Ball’s rookie season for LaVar Ball to blame the Lakers’ coaching staff for not translating his son’s talent into production. Naturally, the basketball dad pumped himself up as the man for the job.
“They’re soft. They don’t know how to coach my son,” LaVar Ball said of the Lakers staff in a recent interview with Bleacher Report. “I know how to coach him. I tell him to go get the victory. Stop messing around.”
Although Ball did not point the finger directly at head coach Luke Walton, saying his problem instead was with the “losing,” the second-year coach was forced to address the situation before the Lakers (8-10) knocked off the Bulls, 103-94, Tuesday night.
“Absolutely nothing,” Walton told reporters when asked how he would respond to Ball’s criticism. “It’s not what we’re here to do or talk about.”
Lonzo, LaVar’s eldest son, has had his game scrutinized at every turn since he scored just three points in the Lakers’ double-digit loss to the Clippers to start the season. While he searches for his shooting stroke (8.9 points per game on 31 percent shooting, just 23 percent from 3-point range), Lonzo said he’s been focusing on the fundamentals, like rebounding, as assistant coach Brian Shaw has instructed him to do.
The 20-year-old Ball has shown glimpses of the promise that made the Lakers take him with the No. 2 pick, including Sunday, when he posted his second triple-double of the season — scoring 11 points, recording 11 assists and pulling down a career-high 16 rebounds.
LaVar Ball might just take credit for that performance after returning to Los Angeles from China, where he spent the past couple weeks embroiled in controversy over middle son LiAngelo’s shoplifting arrest. LiAngelo and two other UCLA freshmen were suspended indefinitely last week after they were caught stealing from stores around their team’s hotel in Hangzhou.
Although LaVar can’t seem to let LiAngelo’s situation go — exacerbating a war of words with President Trump over his role in setting the players free — he’s prepared to commit himself again to being Lonzo’s backseat coach.
“Go get the W. Do whatever it takes. That’s why I’m down here saying, ‘Rebound,'” LaVar Ball said of Lonzo. “He’s been away from me too long. I see tendencies in his game — they’re trying to baby him a little bit.”
With his youngest son, high school junior LaMelo, LaVar literally took coaching into his own hands when he pulled the 16-year-old out of Chino Hills (Calif.) High School over disagreements with the basketball coach. Ball also had publicly feuded with the team’s former coach, who wound up getting fired at the end of the school year.