(SP) – A coalition of more than two dozen media and culture experts has warned that basketball father LaVar Ball is likely to say increasingly idiotic stuff in order to draw attention to himself and his sons, and it is within the power of the sports media and fans to make him fade into obscurity by simply pretending he doesn’t exist.
“While Lonzo Ball is a prospective NBA Draft pick and therefore maintains some inescapable relevance, there is not an athlete father in professional sports who has any impact on the games that are played,” said Gregory Dietrich, head of the Center For We Don’t Have To Do This. “LaVar Ball is no more important to the sports world than the father of some pitcher on the Royals. We hold the power.”
Ball has generated headlines over the past month for saying his oldest son is already better than Steph Curry, that he was better in his heyday than Michael Jordan, and that UCLA was eliminated from the NCAA Tournament because of its white players — an odd statement considering Ball’s sons have a white mother. With his younger sons not expected to be as successful on the court as even Lonzo, for whom success in the NBA is no lock, it is expected that Mr. Ball will become more and more desperate in the coming months and years.
“There is no law that says we have to put the father of some college point guard on First Take and report his every idiotic utterance as breaking news,” said Dietrich. “We can just treat him like the tens of millions of other sports fans who say dumb things every day, which is to just let him yell into the nothingness on social media. He doesn’t have to be given a platform.”
Despite the expert opinion, Ball is currently scheduled for seven ESPN shows on Monday and will also appear on Fox News on Sunday to advocate sending Lonzo Ball to the Middle East on a diplomatic mission.
“He’s the only one with the ability to bring worldwide peace,” Ball said today.
