LaVar Ball is the best thing to happen to sports in years – Business Insider

LaVar Ball with his son
Lonzo.
Mark J.
Terrill

The best thing to happen to sports in years is happening right
before our eyes, and most sports fans and members of the sports
media just want it to go away.

It is not a team. It is not an athlete. It is not a talking head.

It is LaVar Ball, the boisterous father of UCLA star freshman
Lonzo Ball and high-school hoops stars LiAngelo Ball and LaMelo
Ball.

Ball has made a name for himself and intensified the spotlight on
his sons with his many over-the-top and mind-boggling comments
including his belief that he would have beaten Michael Jordan
one-on-one in their primes, that Lonzo is better than Stephen
Curry already, and that his sons are in a better position to
succeed than the children of LeBron James.

On Thursday, Ball took that swagger to a new level when he was a
guest on the over-the-top ESPN debate show “First Take.” When
host Stephen A. Smith challenged Ball on his comments about
Jordan, Ball didn’t back down, saying Jordan “would need help,”
adding: “He’s too small.”

From there, things just escalated. The two traded verbal punches
like Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. For each Smith exclamation,
Ball just upped the ante.

Here is about five minutes of that segment, but you can get a
sense of the melee in just the first 30 to 60 seconds:

On Friday, a portion of that segment was shown on ESPN’s “Mike
& Mike,” where host Mike Golic said he was “done” with Ball,
using the words “dumb, idiotic, stupid.”

“I was entertained for a while,” Golic said. “Now I am officially
done. I’m done. Not on the show. Not mentioning. Done. Zippo.
Done. Never leave my mouth again, that name. Dumb. Idiotic.
Stupid.”

Many sports fans and other media members have expressed similar
thoughts.

That so many are actually angry and want Ball to go away
is exactly why he is so great. LaVar Ball is shaking the sports
world at its core at a time when the sports world could use a
little shaking.

Maybe Dan Le Batard of ESPN said it best: Ball is acting like a
professional wrestler.

“I love him so much, just ruining all the constructs in sports,”
Le Batard said on his show. “I’ve been waiting all my life for
the professional wrestler [to come to sports] and unfortunately
it is not an actual athlete who is behaving like a professional
wrestler — it’s an athlete’s dad. I’ll take it, because he’s
doing it. He’s just spewing gibberish everywhere, and then when
you call him on it he doubles down on the gibberish.”

Dwayne
“the Rock” Johnson and Triple H.
Don
Feria/AP Images for WWE

I am not a fan of professional wrestling, but I understand its
appeal, and Ball is that appeal. He has bravado. He has volume.
He is over-the-top and crazy. He is bringing fun and
entertainment to the world of mainstream sports at a time when
mainstream sports are becoming less fun, too serious, and too
full of themselves.

Sports are supposed to be fun. Sports debates are supposed to be
fun. And yet shows like “First Take” and FS1’s “Undisputed” spend
hours every day making serious arguments out of things that are
really not that important.

To any reasonable sports fan, whether or not LaVar Ball would
beat Michael Jordan one-on-one is a silly topic that merits
little attention. And yet there was Stephen A. Smith wanting to
have a serious debate about the subject. And what does Ball do?
He just says a half-dozen crazier things.

Ball says crazy things. People get bothered. Ball says more crazy
things. People get angry. Instead of backing down or just
standing his ground, Ball says even crazier things. Now people
don’t know what to do, and anarchy in the sports media world
reigns.

Ball is almost certainly not doing this intentionally, but he is
showing the world just how silly serious-and-over-the-top sports
debate can be.

If you can get past the part about a father thinking his sons are
awesome, and stop taking him too seriously, Ball is fun. Yet,
when people do take him too seriously it just reminds us how
sports can be too silly and too serious at times when it doesn’t
need to be.

Maybe Ball believes his son Lonzo is better than Curry. If he
does, that’s fine. It has zero impact on whether Lonzo actually
is better than Curry.

Or maybe he is just riling up the easily riled and this is all
just part of the script.

During the “debate,” Ball told Smith that Ball’s family and his
son’s rise to fame had been a plan “since day one.”

“I’m the one who made Lonzo!” Ball said. “You know why? Because I
picked a beautiful wife to make him. Had it all planned out from
day one. You can’t argue. Them are my boys!”

So maybe, like professional wrestling, this has been scripted
from the beginning. Maybe Ball is playing us to increase the fame
of his sons, the fame of his family, and the fame of their brand,
Big Baller Brand. Maybe it is scripted like end-zone dances or
bat flips.

I’m OK with that. Because, like professional wrestling, those
things can be scripted and still be fun. The sports world needs
more LaVar Balls, not fewer.