The NBA Draft is over, and admit it: You just might miss LaVar Ball.
The NBA is far too big a stage for a player’s Dad to continue to drive the news cycle. I think LaVar’s days of influencing opinion on Lonzo, the newest Los Angeles Laker, are mostly over. His unveiling of a purple-and-gold ‘Big Baller Brand’ hat on Draft Night, his prediction that Lonzo will take the Lakers to the playoffs in his first year . . . all the final acts of his long-running play, “Lonzo and Me”.
Sure, he’ll make a headline or two along the way when he feels Lonzo isn’t being used properly, or when he feels Lonzo is not getting enough love from Charles Barkley on TNT, or some such nonsense. But it will be a trifle compared to his wave-making “Lonzo is better than Steph Curry/I could beat Michael Jordan one-on-one” run these past few months.
Which, ultimately, was harmless stuff.
The best way to view him was always as a P.T. Barnum figure, an American huckster, a showman, a pro wrestler. He wasn’t damaging anyone. He may have been rude to Fox’s Kristine Leahy, yes. But for the most part, he was entertaining and silly, more to be chuckled at than to take offense.
The only serious argument against LaVar’s Vince McMahon-like assault on the media is that he perhaps created too much pressure on Lonzo and his UCLA Bruins in March Madness; that perhaps the increased spotlight made Lonzo look inferior when Kentucky’s De’Aaron Fox thoroughly outplayed Lonzo in the Sweet 16.
That’s an argument that might have meat. But I’d more buy an argument that Steve Alford’s coaching was the primary reason UCLA didn’t outplay Kentucky that night.
Ultimately, LaVar Ball was never to be taken seriously for his roaring mouth. In reality, he should have been taken seriously as a father who appears to have, by most accounts, a strong and loving relationship with his son, Lonzo. This does not appear to be a Marv/Todd Marinovich-type relationship, bound for dysfunction and despair.
Even when LaVar said before Thursday’s NBA Draft that Lonzo-to-the-Lakers had come down “from Zeus and Jesus”, Lonzo stood off to the side and laughed. And when Lavar was shouting on Draft Night about his next two sons, and about how Lonzo-to-the-Lakers has been in the works “19, 20 years!” and how he had that hat made “when he was a baby”, even Lonzo couldn’t stop smiling when he boasted. He did everything but wink.
Jalen Rose compared him on ESPN to Muhammad Ali’s hype man, Bundini Brown. That’s as good a call as any. It’s part of the show, after all. And where is Lonzo headed?
To re-create ‘Showtime.’