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The Ball in the Family podcast included the moment where LaVar Ball referenced his sons’ families while discussing his wider plans. “Gelo already got my number one pick: La’One. If I raised you three killas in the backyard, what do you think I’m finna do with a gym in the backyard?” LaVar said. The comment was made casually, but it immediately drew attention because LaMelo has not publicly confirmed having a child. He has also not addressed the claim on social media or in interviews, keeping the situation unclear from his side. LaMelo has been in a long-term relationship with model Ana Montana, but there has been no confirmation connecting her to the claim.
Ball did not produce well in a Cavs uniform; in 35 games, he put up just 4.6 points, 4.0 rebounds, and 3.9 assists while shooting 30.1 percent from the field and 27.2 percent from deep. It got to a point where Ball's father, LaVar, felt as though he had to step in and tell the Cavs how to utilize his son better. “You're already messing him up by not starting him,” LaVar said in an appearance on the Ball in the Family podcast. “You got him coming off the bench, running to the corner. He’s never played like that in his life and he’s supposed to adapt after he didn’t play all these years of basketball. That’s not going to work.” “I told them that when I went up there and I said, ‘If you only want him to play 20 minutes, how about we let him play 24 but just let him play the last two quarters?'”
He, of course, ended up playing just two seasons for the Lakers, with LA trading him away in the Anthony Davis deal back in 2019. But for LaVar, this was a huge mistake on LA's end, as he believes that they would have had multiple titles already had they just kept him. “He’s been groomed to make everybody better. Right, from UCLA days, the Chino Hills days,” LaVar said in an appearance in the Ball in the Family podcast. “How you make the best team? You got to have that piece right? Make everybody go. Average a triple double, but you got to let him go. Everybody who’s balling out of control came from the Lakers. Zo had them all running. They would’ve had championships by now.”
Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson was bullish on the addition of the selfless guard, touting his vision and playmaking. Atkinson, however, could not find ample minutes for Lonzo Ball. The 28-year-old Ball has been under multiple mentors in the NBA, but on “Ball in the Family,” he claimed that his father, LaVar Ball, and his former coach at UCLA, Steve Alford, coached him harder. “I felt like I was coached a certain way for a long period of my life, so when I got to the league, this was weird to me. Like if I was playing badly, somebody would be, ‘Oh, it’s okay.’ That wasn’t translating to me. I'd rather hear like, ‘What the f***? Do your s***.’ It was an adjustment. I haven’t been around a lot of coaches who are going to get on you like that,” said Ball. “Stan Van Gundy was kind of tough, I guess. But other than him, there’s really not hard coaching out here. I got coached much harder in college and by my pops for real.”
LaVar Ball: People been saying I still can't beat Michael Jordan one-on-one, especially without my foot. Well, guess what? If I really wanted to, I can give him 70 and a**-whooping. Lonzo Ball: Man, I got to start getting on TikTok, bro. Big Baller on TikTok, man. LiAngelo Ball: Do they tell him to make these for free? Lonzo Ball: He’s definitely getting bread for this sh*t.
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LaVar Ball -- the father of basketball stars Lonzo, LiAngelo and LaMelo Ball -- had his foot amputated after suffering a serious medical issue, TMZ Sports has learned. We're told the Ball family patriarch underwent a recent procedure to have his right foot removed ... but despite it all, he is in great spirits and doing well.
LaVar Ball chalks the injuries up to the fact his boys, LaMelo Ball and Lonzo Ball, are trained by NBA folks who don't know what they're doing instead of, well, him. "They say, oh, LaVar, you worked the boys out too hard -- that's why they hurt," he says. "No, the reason they hurt is because they got away from me. And they start doing these roody-poo workouts. Because if you keep running them hills, you're going to keep that power and that strength. But you start dealing with these rubber bands and doing this lightweight stuff, of course you're going to start breaking down."
LaVar Ball got more on this. And room to plug, casually, his Big Baller Brand, which, by the "BBB" shirt he's wearing, is still a thing. "They've been trained hard enough? No, no, no," he says. "Because you condition your body for running and jumping. You've got to condition your legs. So that's why I always have my boys in them hills and running hard in them hills. That will make you run like a deer when you get on that court, so you won't be getting hurt. A lot of things have to do with them raggedy shoes that Melo be wearing. Them shoes are not made the right way for him. That's why he keeps tweaking his ankle every single time."
Alan Foster -- who cofounded the Big Baller Brand -- is dragging the Balls to court once again ... this time he's suing LaVar Ball, Tina Ball, LaMelo Ball as well as PUMA, alleging they screwed him out of hundreds of millions of dollars. Foster's claims were spelled out in a new lawsuit filed in federal court in California earlier this week ... some four years after he had a falling out with the Ball family over the BBB business.
NBA Central: LaVar Ball advises Bronny James to pursue a career in Australia rather than attend college "If you want to play basketball and you really that dude, why am I sitting in class trying to pass a chemistry test? I don’t wanna play no chemistry. I don't wanna practice no Spanish."… pic.twitter.com/sVbpnIIBz6
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Lavar Ball first called out MJ in 2017, saying “Back in my heyday, I would kill Michael Jordan one-on-one,” and he hasn’t backed down since. Ball was a guest on the Audacy Original Podcast “Stacey King’s Gimme the Hot Sauce” and once again proclaimed that he could take down the greatest basketball player of all time.
“Here’s the thing: 1-on-1, my competitive skill to win is too strong, and he was too light in the tail to mess with me. 1-on-1, there’s nothing he could do. I’m too fast and too strong,” Ball said (59:23 in player above). “I bag him in, even if he tries to stop me, I lift him off his feet and I just give him a jump hook with the right or the left, or give him a nice little bank shot step through. Easy money. He’s 210 pounds. I’m 270.”
“Mike can’t do nothing with me right now,” he said. “Mike is 50-something years old. I’m 55 and I drink milk all day and eat steaks. He’s smoking cigars and drinking cognac. How you gonna run through me?”
LaVar Ball: “Lonzo is going to be fine. He’s only 25 years old. He’s going to get his stuff together and then he’ll be ready to play and do his thing again. People just got to stay off that and thinking ‘Oh, you’re going to come back tomorrow, or next week, or next month.’”