his bombastic father publicly declared that he would be a Laker prior to the draft<\/a>. The Lakers then selected him No. 2 overall in 2017.<\/p>\n\u201cI think he had a huge influence on it, bro,\u201d Ball said of Lavar\u2019s involvement on the \u201cCurious Mike\u201d podcast with Michael Porter Jr. \u201cTo be honest\u2026 I think he damn near made it to where they had to pick me. Really, to a point, I really do feel like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lakers passed on drafting Jayson Tatum, who went No. 3 to the Boston Celtics that year. Fans have not forgotten the Lakers missing out on Tatum, but the team eventually used Ball along with Brandon Ingram as key assets in the trade that brought Anthony Davis to LA.<\/p>\n
Ball\u2019s two seasons with the Lakers were tainted by Lavar\u2019s antics, including public criticism of then-head coach Luke Walton. <\/p>\n
The guard \u2014 older brother to LiAngelo and recently traded All-Star point guard LaMelo \u2014 was also forced to wear basketball shoes from Lavar\u2019s Big Baller Brand\u2019s, which Lonzo felt were not ready to be used for competitive play.<\/p>\n
Lonzo Ball regrets how much control his father, Lavar, had of his early NBA career. Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a basketball shoe, bro. It wasn\u2019t ready to be used. So I tried to play in it, but they would rip and pop out like every quarter,\u201d Ball said on Porter\u2019s podcast. <\/p>\n
\u201cDMo [Darren Moore, Ball\u2019s manager] had backup shoes in his backpack that he would give me right over the bench if they would blow out. I\u2019m like, \u2018I can\u2019t play like this, bro.\u2019 And right when I changed my shoes, I started playing great again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t like the shoes. I addressed it. I didn\u2019t like the shoes. But then we would get into an argument and it would be like, damn, if you don\u2019t wear the shoes, then you going against the family type s\u2013t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ball suggested the shoes might have played a role in his early knee injuries, which have been irreversible setbacks throughout his NBA career.<\/p>\n
Lavar Ball prioritized growing the family\u2019s Big Baller Brand over his son\u2019s success in the NBA. Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cI literally was just hooping and following my pops, listening to my pops\u2026I was just doing what I was told really,\u201d Ball said. \u201cI guess that would be my one regret, like taking control of my career earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way I was raised was like a blessing and a curse.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lonzo Ball has played seven seasons in the NBA, but his career hasn\u2019t panned out how the second…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,160,4442,150,6,12,66],"class_list":["post-820414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba-draft","tag-basketball","tag-california","tag-lonzo-ball","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-nba","tag-nba-draft","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117157456923375827","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}