In a lengthy interview with ESPN’s Jeff Goodman that was published Friday, LaVar Ball touched on his sons’ basketball careers, as expected, but also offered an update on his wife’s condition. Tina Ball suffered a stroke in February, and it took away her ability to speak while keeping her in a hospital for over two months. Her husband has been assisting with her recovery at their home.
“That’s my wife, and I take care of her,” Ball told Goodman, who elicited a more human side of a person who has been making headlines for weeks with a seemingly unending stream of outlandish remarks. However, Ball appears incapable of saying anything without causing a few eyebrows to arch, and so it was with his comments on helping his wife regain some of what the stroke took away from her.
“She wants to talk, and she can get out a few words,” Ball said. “I’m rebooting her right now. She’s saying, ‘LaVar, you’re right. You are right.’ That’s all I want to hear her say. Now we can get another 25 years having a good time. She is going to get better with me.”
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It’s certainly commendable that Ball, even as his son Lonzo prepares to launch his NBA career while the family launches its own line of merchandise (you might have heard about the $495 sneakers), has been focused on his ailing wife. Just as, for all the criticism Ball received for boasting about Lonzo in a way that could have heaped unnecessary pressure on the 19-year-old prospect, many pointed that the father deserved credit for helping raise a trio of apparently well-adjusted, star-athlete boys.
But it’s somewhat disconcerting to hear a man say that, in the wake of his wife suffering a major stroke, that he is “rebooting” her to tell him that he is always “right,” which is “all” he wants to “hear her say.” Some might also question the wisdom of approaching the possibility of his sons helping take care of their mother as a “burden” that would get in the way of their personal pursuits.
“Like I told my boys: ‘I got her. Now you can do whatever you want to do. What I’m not going to [do] is burden you with sitting there rubbing her hand,’ ” Ball told Goodman. “We’re not making a movie.”
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Ball’s oddest comments, though, may have come while describing a lesson he imparted to Lonzo, as well as his younger brothers LiAngelo (who is set to play for UCLA, as Lonzo did last year) and LaMelo (a high school sophomore who once scored 92 points in one game), when they were children.
“I told them, ‘If you’re going to be disrespectful to your mom, I want you to be all the time.’ So, excuse my language right here, but if you want to say, ‘Good morning, b—-,’ that’s fine with me,” Ball said. “I’m not going to say nothing. If you want to call your mom a b—-, that’s fine.
“But don’t get sick, when your stomach is hurting and you want me to care for you because you know I ain’t. … She’ll clean up the throw-up, the s—, whatever. She’ll take care of what you want. … So don’t wait until you need something, or you need her to make you something, and now you want to be nice to her. …
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“So they never disrespect their mom or talk back to her or say nothing. Because I say, ‘In the long run, you’re going to need her before you need me.’ ”
Again, Ball’s goal is commendable in terms of wanting his sons to appreciate all the things their mother does for them and to treat her with the respect she deserves. It’s just that the way he is framing things, including suggesting that the only reason his sons should not use degrading language toward their mother is because of the many tasks they can expect her to perform for them (what about all the women who won’t have similar expectations?), seems potentially problematic.
Ball did make it clear that he is not in the habit of thinking twice about anything that comes out of his mouth, even in the face of questions about his attitude toward women. Regarding his widely criticized on-air comments to FS1’s Kristine Leahy in May, when he told her to “stay in your lane,” Ball said, “I don’t regret anything I say … never.”
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In Leahy’s case, Ball had already made his unapologetic stance more than apparent when his family’s company began selling “Stay in yo lane” shirts (including a women’s version). In May, he told ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, “I don’t put out no girls. … Me being alpha dog in our family, I’m gonna have boys. Gimme three boys.”
In that story, he also praised his wife to Shelburne, saying, “She’s the one. Just so smooth. She’s not like other girls. She’s tough, smart, pretty.
“I told my wife, ‘I been with you so long, you can have one eye drooped and your mouth over here like this and you’re still beautiful to me. I look at you the same way. That ain’t gonna never change.’”
Elsewhere in his Friday ESPN interview, Ball doubled down on his boast in March that, back in his “heyday,” he would “kill Michael Jordan one-on-one.” Ball told Goodman that the score of his hypothetical showdown with the player many consider the greatest in NBA history would be “13-2.”
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He added, “[The] only reason I give him two is ’cause he’s Jordan. He’s too little, too little to guard me.”
Getting back to his family, Ball also claimed that just as Lonzo played a single season in college before turning pro, “All my boys are gonna be one-and-done.” He said that LiAngelo would follow suit “whether he’s good or bad,” and hinted that it might actually be helpful if his middle son wasn’t a realistic NBA draft prospect at that point, because he could then “hope [other teams] don’t take him.”
“Bring him into the Lakers as a free agent, let him wind up with his brother and watch how good they play together,” Ball added, reiterating his certainty that his beloved Lakers will, in fact, select Lonzo later this month with their No. 2 overall pick. Others are less sure if Los Angeles will make that move, either because the team may not be entirely sold on Lonzo’s upside or simply out of an aversion to having to deal with his domineering father.
One thing is for sure: Ball has no plans to take things down a notch when his oldest son reaches the NBA. “I don’t step back,” he told Goodman.
“Why would I change?”
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