LaVar Ball Just Ruined It
Man! I was totally on this guy’s side. I wanted everything he wanted. Lonzo bringing multiple championships to the Lakers? Sign me up. Better than Magic? Sweet! Magic was such an amazing and inspirational player that I can honestly say I’d absolutely love to watch someone more amazing and more inspirational than him. Big Ballers Brand making billions? Go get it my man, more power to you! But he just let it all slip.
Now here’s where many of you may assume I’m going to the race card, and I am, but not the way you might think. Follow me here…LaVar Ball’s first and most egregious mistake was making excuses for his son. So the kid lost a big game. Move on. Nobody wins every game. But LaVar couldn’t. He didn’t. Instead he made excuses and, instead of acting like the father of an NBA Lottery pick, he is acting like the father of a loser. That by itself may have been enough to make UCLA think twice about bringing any more Ball brothers to Pauley Pavilion. But he compounded it all by playing the race card, “Realistically you can’t win no championship with three white guys because the foot speed is too slow.”
The worst part is, what he said was about the weakest form of racism you’ll ever see (but make no mistake, the comment was technically racist because it perpetuates a stereotype). Rick Pitino once famously quipped, “We played four white guys and an Egyptian,” in an effort to explain how hard he tried to NOT run up the score. But it was a joke so we all laughed. Charles Barkley can make the same kind of joke and it’s funny to everyone. And all of the slow white guys can say it because…they ARE slow white guys. They have the credibility, position and context to make that kind of joke. LaVar has none of that. And he wasn’t making a joke (or if he was, it wasn’t funny).
His credibility was already in question and now it’s gone completely. He is the father of talented player but has no real talent or pedigree himself so he has no business flapping his lips about who wasn’t pulling their weight. When somebody starts paying him millions of dollars for his basketball acumen, then maybe I’ll listen. And the context was all wrong. He wasn’t making a joke; he was making excuses and complaining.
Which multibillion dollar company is going to want to get in bed with this guy and pay him $100 million for his petulant, loud mouthed, loser brand now? Dude just shot himself in the foot and for no good reason other than he can’t stop bumping his gums. While I had been enjoying the ride and had his back, he can kick rocks now. It’s been fun but now he’s done, and he has nobody to blame but himself.