It’s no longer shocking to hear famous sports dad LaVar Ball manufacture wild and absurd comments, but anytime he does, it still makes the news.

For his latest act, Ball decided to pull his middle son, LiAngelo Ball, from UCLA, which suspended LiAngelo and two other Bruins indefinitely for their role in a controversial shoplifting incident last month in China. That didn’t sit well with LaVar, leading to his decision to yank LiAngelo away from the Los Angeles-based campus, and going out as far as to say that UCLA’s temporary exile of his son is tantamount to being locked behind bars, per Eric Sondheimer and Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times.

“He might as well be in jail,” LaVar Ball, LiAngelo’s father, told The Times. “I’m not going to let UCLA take the fire out of my boy by not letting him play for two months.

The ever-outspoken LaVar obviously is not going to kowtow to anyone and to any institution if he felt that his sons’ future is being compromised. The difference in this case, however, is that it generally seems that the indefinite banishment of LiAngelo from the Bruins is a fair penalty — if not relatively lenient — considering the gravity of LiAngelo’s actions and the headache and embarrassment it caused the Bruins.

LaVar’s pulling out his son from UCLA came before the school gives a definite length of suspension for LiAngelo and his cohorts, which gives the idea that LaVar probably just wanted to save face by preempting UCLA’s decision by making one of his own.

The Bruins, meanwhile, appear to be doing just fine without LiAngelo, as they are 7-1 overall with a few weeks to go before conference play kicks in.