I'll admit it, I'm part of the problem, too. Any time I see a headline including the name "LaVar Ball," I can't help myself. I immediately click on it to see whatever outrageous thing he has to say now.
"My son will win more than six NBA titles" is his latest, and it's as ridiculous as just about everything else he has said. It's outrageous, yet we keep tuning in for more. It isn't that Lavar Ball _ the father of UCLA star Lonzo Ball _ is particularly interesting, it's just that he's entertaining. He talks trash like Muhammad Ali did, yet he's never really done anything of significance other than raise a son who is really good at basketball. But he knows precisely what he is doing, understands marketing and is playing us all for the fools we have become.
This is a society where the loudest, most bizarre and most outrageous seem to become celebrities without ever having to accomplish much of anything. We have made stars out of the Kardashians for not much more than having a father who was on OJ's dream team. These people keep themselves famous by doing and saying outrageous things. There is currently a foul-mouthed 13-year-old who is getting rich and famous because, well, she is a foul-mouthed 13-year-old with a signature phrase of "Cash me Outside."
That's why LaVar Ball isn't an idiot or a loudmouth dummy. His ridiculous boasts about how his son is better than Stephen Curry and LeBron James, his high-profile disputes with Charles Barkley and his inflating of his own career accomplishments are all just a part of an act. Ball is extremely intelligent and knows exactly what he is doing. I admire him for that. He found a shtick that works and exploited it. But what he is doing will have some negative consequences. It isn't without a downside and it sets a dangerous precedent for nutty, out of control sports parents.
Sports parents in general have gotten nuttier and more out of control as time has moved on. There have been countless studies about why this is and many different conclusions to those studies. But nobody is denying it's a problem _ and a growing one. That's why many youth leagues and high school athletic leagues have had to adopt codes of conduct for parents and why so many high school coaches are opting to step aside at younger and younger ages.
It isn't completely harmless what Lonzo Ball is doing because there is no doubt it will produce more outrageous copycats who aren't smart enough to truly pull it off. Ball, himself, is harmless. He is indeed creating a brand for his sons, and now that one of them, Lonzo, is headed to the NBA _ where he isn't bound by the NCAA's rules about amateurism _ it's only going to get worse.
LaVar has already said that an acceptable shoe contract for his sons will need to be worth $1 billion over 10 years. The sad thing is that someone will probably give him that or very close to that. That's the genius part of it, but the more noise he makes, the more we seem to pay attention to him. You can't go a day without seeing LaVar on television _ he seems to be more of a fixture on ESPN these days than Chris Berman or Scott Van Pelt. Fox Sports 1 needs ratings, and it hasn't been shy about putting Ball on the air and promoting the heck out of it. His son is going to be rich, and Lavar has become famous.
All of this doesn't sit well with me because the message is that this is the way you have to act if you want your children to get ahead. When I read stories of how he treats his kids' coaches and how vocal he is after games, it makes me cringe. I don't know how many copycat acts there will be, but I hope not many. I hope most parents will realize their kids aren't nearly as good as Ball's kids are. I hope most understand if they act like this they will make fools of themselves and embarrass their kids.
I don't hate Lavar Ball, and as I said, I actually find him amusing and see him as engaging in mostly harmless banter. But I hate the message we are sending by giving him attention, and I find this whole story somewhat sad.
We shouldn't be glorifying a guy for being an obnoxious sports parent. He should be the object of our scorn.
