Lonzo Ball has not only failed to live up to his pre-draft hype, but the rising third-year guard is taking his talents to the New Orleans Pelicans in the wake of the Anthony Davis trade. His oldest younger brother, LiAngelo, never even received a cup of coffee in the NBA before pursuing other avenues of professional basketball. The youngest of the three Ball brothers, LaMelo, will play in the relative anonymity of Australia next season before putting his name in the 2020 NBA Draft.
The Ball family takeover of basketball as we know it, needless to say, hasn't exactly come to fruition. ESPN finally acknowledged that reality on Wednesday, with a spokesperson telling The Athletic's Richard Deitsch the network ” has no plans moving forward” to give LaVar Ball, bombastic family patriarch, any type of platform.
There will be no LaVar Ball on any ESPN platform heading forward — at least as of now. Asked if Ball will be used as an on-air guest, an on-the-record source for digital, or a background source for ESPN, an ESPN spokesperson said,"We have no plans moving forward."
— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) June 19, 2019
LaVar Ball first rose to prominence during his oldest son Lonzo's standout freshman season at UCLA in 2015-16.
Taking full advantage of the modern media age by accepting every interview request and conducting them with an unabashed zeal for the unrealistic, Ball and his sons were the talk of the sports world for the better part of two years. LaVar Ball used the fame and notoriety from his on-air persona and the success of his sons to start a clothing and apparel company called Big Baller Brand, and even founded an alternative league to the NCAA called the Junior Basketball Association.
LaVar Ball made his most recent and final appearance on ESPN earlier this week, making an inappropriate and sexually-suggestive remark to host Molly Qerim and predicting that LaMelo, currently 33rd on ESPN's 2020 mock draft, would be the No. 1 pick in next year's draft.
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