If the Los Angeles Lakers thought that enforcing existing rules that are meant to prevent media members from speaking to family members of players during games were going to stop LaVar Ball from sharing his latest thoughts on Lonzo Ball (and everything else on his mind) with the world, they were mistaken.
LaVar basically already said as much when he expressed absolutely zero concern over the so-called ‘LaVar Ball Rule.’ And just a few days later, he’s already he demonstrated why.
In an interview with SiriusXM NBA Radio, Ball not only claimed that Lonzo was “disgusted” with the Lakers’ record, he also suggested it’s a result of his son not playing at the start of fourth quarters:
“He’s disgusted. He’s not used to losing like this. The Lakers should build around Lonzo. Why are they sitting him down and not starting him the fourth quarter? This is why the record is raggedy.”
On its face this appears to be two more controversial statements from LaVar, but when diving deeper the first isn’t really isn’t that shocking or titillating.
Of course Lonzo would not be pleased the amount of losing he’s encountered at the NBA level. He’s probably never lost 15 games at any level, and the Lakers are barely a quarter of the way through their season. It stands to reason no one on the team is pleased.
That’s a frustrating adjustment for almost any highly-touted rookie, because most of them always end up on bad teams and for the first time in their lives, and they aren’t the best player on the floor anymore.
As for LaVar’s criticism of the Lakers’ rotations in the fourth quarter, it isn’t exactly a new criticism, but it’s also unclear if there’s an easy solution to the issue. It would be great for the Lakers if Lonzo was playing so well that it was obviously a mistake to sit him at all in the closing periods, but so far that’s been far from the case.
If anything, Ball has closed quite a few games he probably didn’t strictly deserve to on merit but did anyway because he is the Lakers’ future and the team is very transparently looking to groom him.
It’s painfully clear that there is nothing the Lakers can do to prevent LaVar from speaking to the media, but it’s also becoming more obvious that he might be running out of things to say. At some point, people are going to stop paying attention.
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