Posted on 11/19/2017 10:09:46 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
LaVar Ball, patriarch of the famed basketball family, has denied that President Donald Trump helped his son, UCLA freshman basketballer LiAngelo Ball, get out of potential shoplifting charges in China.
Speaking to ESPN, LaVar Ball said “everyone” wanted to make it seem like Trump helped the family, and noted that people try to “make a big deal out of nothing.”
Ball’s basketball family has a reality show, Ball in the Family, that airs on Facebook, and his brash style is regularly parodied by Kenan Thompson on Saturday Night Live. The family includes Los Angeles Lakers point guard Lonzo Ball; UCLA frosh LiAngelo; and high school basketball sensation LaMelo Ball, who is already committed to UCLA.
UCLA basketball team members LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley and Jalen Hall were caught shoplifting during UCLA’s trip to China to play a game against Georgia Tech. They were confined to the team hotel while authorities investigated the incident and pondered formal charges. All three players returned to the States this week and are indefinitely suspended by the program.
At a press conference following their return, they thanked Trump for his part in freeing them after the President asked them for kudos via his Twitter account.
But LaVar Ball isn’t buying Trump’s intervention with China President Xi Jinping.
“Who?” Ball said to ESPN. “What was (Trump) over there for? Don’t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out.”
Trump boasted via Twitter that the players were facing 10 years in prison before he spoke with Xi Jinping. LaVar Ball previously downplayed the charges, saying it “ain’t that big of a deal.”
“As long as my boy’s back here, I’m fine,” Ball told ESPN. “I’m happy with how things were handled. A lot of people like to say a lot of things that they thought happened over there. Like I told him, ‘They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes.’ I’m from L.A. I’ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. My son has built up enough character that one bad decision doesn’t define him. Now if you can go back and say when he was 12 years old he was shoplifting and stealing cars and going wild, then that’s a different thing.
“Everybody gets stuck on the negativity of some things and they get stuck on them too long. That’s not me. I handle what’s going on and then we go from there.”
ESPN reported that there was surveillance footage of Ball, Hill and Riley shoplifting from three stores inside a retail center near the team hotel in Hangzhou, China. Sources previously told ESPN that the situation was likely to be resolved in several weeks, but Trump was visiting China and claimed to have brought the matter up with Xi Jinping. Days later, the players were freed.
LOL so true..have you seen Lonzo play..biggest overrated punk Ive ever seen(Other than LeBron)
Reality show? The reality is the father is an a hole and all his kids give indications the nut don’t fall from the tree.
LaVar is a guy.
I’d say your comments display something worse than the ungratefulness you speak of.
What’s not clear is what kind of thinking motivates your statements.
Trump just tweeted.
“Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail!”
Trump is a genius. He just took the heat off Roy Moore, maybe till the election. So repeat after me. Here comes the media.
Trump is a racist.
Trump is a racist,
Trump is a racist.
No Trump is a genius that wants Moore elected US senator from Alabama.
Could be you didn’t think carefully and posted on impulse.
LaVar’s stores will be closed as payback to his son’s criminal activities.
Hey LaVar who then got your criminal son out of jail?
Roger (Naval aviator)
Hadda (fun-loving daughter)
Ontha (college graduate)
Kostoom (gay bro’)
Terd (related to Karl Rove)
Lo (used car salesman, Oriental mother)
On the other hand, could be you know full well there are black people with good manners. And that you deliberately posted the comment hoping to stir up trouble, in an attempt to make this forum appear racist.
How’s that for gratitude?????
We can only hope. :)
President Trump really had no choice to get these thugs out of jail, I doubt he wanted to do it but he had to otherwise would have been called a racist..everyone who says “He should have left them in China” those same liberals would be screaming “Trump’s a RACIST” if he had done that..These thugs are lucky I am NOT President, I would have left them there to ROT
Wouldn’t want to be guilty of saying “thank you”, now, would we? Especially to a white cracker. Pretty unbelievable.
<< My son has built up enough character that one bad decision doesn’t define him. >>
Safe bet this wasn’t his first shoplifting.
Imagine stating the same comment about “the world renowned gratitude of Black people” to any of the millions of well-mannered black Americans. Or to prominent Trump supporting black people like Pastor Darrell Scott or Diamond and Silk.
You wouldn’t do it. And the point you were trying to make falls apart.
Paul McCartney spent several days in a Japanese jail when he brought with him several ounces of the good stuff. Both sides made their point.
Yes. It occurs daily in the Rat cities and Rat universities.
LaVar, and his ilk, do whatever (and say whatever) it takes to keep the attention on them. They THRIVE on attention, and as long as it’s “anti-Trump” the press cameras roll.
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