LaVar Ball on why he’s targeting Bellevue

LaVar Ball is a lot of things — a businessman; an athlete; and a father. He’s even charting new territory with the Junior Basketball Association.

But quiet and boring, he is not.

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Just take his recent back-and-forth spat with President Donald Trump. After Ball’s son — LiAngelo Ball — was arrested in China, Trump claimed credit for getting the basketball payer released. It turns out, however, there was more to the story. LaVar Ball has enjoyed chiding the president since then. The president has not had kind words in response, calling him an “ungrateful fool” and “a poor man’s Don King.”

“That’s him feuding, he should be paying attention to something else … he calling names when he’s supposed to be solving political things,” Ball told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson.

Ball is defensive of his family, and proud. He says that while some people invest in stocks or real estate, he decided before he even met his wife that he would invest in his family. He sought out an athletic woman, for starters. From there, he crafted his three boys — all basketball players. And they’re the best, he says.

“This ain’t nothing that happened overnight,” he said. “It was all a plan.”

“I’m the one who trained my son,” Ball said. “If I made a cake, I would say it’s the best cake in the world. I wouldn’t say, ‘I made this cake, but Duncan Hines is better.’ I know what I put into my boys. I know the ingredients … I’m always going to say my boys are better than everybody on the fact that I made them my way.”

Junior Basketball Association

What Ball is crafting now is a new basketball league — the Junior Basketball Association. He says it’s an avenue for young players to get into professional sports without having to go through college.

“We don’t tell people who are trying to be doctors and lawyers who have to take reading courses, we don’t say, ‘Hey, if you can’t bench press 220 pounds and run a mile in 6 minutes, you can’t go to your reading classes,” he argues. “But they do that to athletes and say, ‘If you can’t pass a chemistry test, or this Spanish test, you can’t play basketball.”

The Junior Basketball Association is forming eight teams and it is targeting the Seattle area for one of them. A scouting event will be held at the Bellevue Boys and Girls Club on Saturday, April 7, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. In the end, they will only accept eight players. And they will only select ages 17-19.

“We’re giving kids an opportunity to get a jump start on their pro career … this is not where you come out and say, ‘I’m going to try out because I think I’m good.’ Nah, this is a reality check,” he said. “If you really think you want it done, and you have the skills, for all the people coming out there, we are only picking eight.”