The Ball Is In the Warriors' Court
Four Junes ago, I first learned about the Ball family of Chino Hills, California, their ringmaster father LaVar marketing his three highschool sons — senior Lonzo, junior LiAngelo, and freshman LaMelo — as the future of Los Angeles basketball, if not basketball altogether.
More curious — to me, anyways — was LaVar’s insistence that his sons were not influenced by their clearest influence, that franchise and their franchise player revolutionizing the game some 400 miles north in the Bay.
“We play faster than the Golden State Warriors,” LaVar advertised to Danny Chau, “and my boys have been playing like this since they were little.”
LaVar continued, because of course he did: “I got [LaMelo] taking [40-footers] since he was 7 years old. I got all my boys shooting from damn near half court.”
Now about that much, LaVar wasn’t lying. Archival footage of the Ball brothers is mesmerizing at best and pornographic at worst, bad jumper after bad jumper after really bad jumper somehow … going in the bucket anyways? And baby brother LaMelo might’ve been the worst offender, almost immediately garnering a national reputation as everything wrong with the future of the sport. All id and negative superego on the court, LaMelo wasn’t just carefree, he tended to border on the obscene. Too many basketball purists were convinced that Stephen Curry and all those threes were ruining the game of basketball, and LaMelo Ball seemed hellbent on single-handedly proving them right.
Writing that LaMelo has taken the beaten path since that 2016 profile sells it short, and that still feels like I’m selling it short. I’ll go ahead and bullet his journey since, for both our benefit:
After designing a signature shoe for the family’s clothing company Big Baller Brand, LaMelo’s college eligibility instantly comes into question. LaVar subsequently decides to homeschool LaMelo due to apparent disagreements with the high school’s head basketball coach. (That coach’s predecessor was fired after feuding with LaVar, and that coach’s predecessor resigned the post off an undefeated season; do with that information whatever you will.) That lasts two months.
LiAngelo gets caught shoplifting while abroad with the UCLA men’s basketball team — wow, 2017 was three decades ago — so LaVar pulls LiAngelo from college and takes him and LaMelo to play basketball professionally … *checks notes* … in Lithuania? That lasts four months.
Next, LaVar creates the Junior Basketball Association (JBA), a faux-college basketball alternative ostensibly designed to pay its athletes; LaMelo signs with the JBA in June 2018 and is officially announced as the league’s “MARQUEE Player.” No, seriously. He and LiAngelo team up to win the JBA Championship, for what that’s worth. That lasts six months.
Then, LaMelo returns to high school that November, enrolling at SPIRE Institute in … *checks notes again* … Geneva, Ohio. That lasts four months.
Then, LaMelo commits to joining the Australian-based National Basketball League and its “Next Stars” program, playing in 12 games before shutting down for the season with an injured foot. By the end of this past January, LaMelo’s already back in the United States. That lasts three months.
To recap: in the 37 months since October 2017 — when LaVar withdrew LaMelo from Chino Hills — LaMelo played professionally in Australia and fucking Lithuania as a teenager while dominating his father’s handpicked competition and re-enrolling in high school in fucking Ohio in the interim. (Somehow “re-enrolling in high school after launching his professional career” is somewhere around the fifth-most controversial thing he’s done.)
During that span, he also grew into the prototypical modern NBA guard — 6’7” with a 6’10” wingspan, 190 pounds — solidifying himself as maybe the top prospect in this year’s NBA draft, in spite of every red flag I’ve spent the last 607 words explaining.
I’m an avowed LaMelo apologist, but I’m also not foolish about the kid; the blemishes currently on his game are very real, or at least not fake, and I’ve already imagined how his career goes (or doesn’t) in the hands of the wrong franchise. Like, the Knicks. Teams that select high in these drafts are often dysfunctional, or else they wouldn’t be selecting high in the draft. Please, go read that summary of his last 37 months one more time. The absolute last thing LaMelo Ball needs is any more dysfunction.
Crazy enough, what might be the most stable organization in the National Basketball Association, that franchise roughly 400 miles to the north of Chino Hills, is in pole position to bring him in the fold. And maybe even crazier, I think LaMelo Ball is the obvious choice for the Golden State Warriors to select come next Wednesday.
LaMelo-to-the-Dubs felt like an impossibility four Junes ago. The Warriors were knee-deep in league domination, mere days from adding Kevin Durant as a free agent. And LaMelo, let his daddy tell it, was destined to soon be a savior of the flailing Los Angeles Lakers alongside his older brothers.
Yet here we are, fresh off the return of the Lakers to the NBA mountaintop (sans any of the Balls, unfortunately) and an unfulfilling Warriors season marred by injuries to their top stars. Last season’s misfortune helped Golden State earn the number-two pick in this year’s draft, but although they’ve been connected with a number of elite prospects, it appears none have yet to make the type of lasting impression that would justify such a high selection. There’s also been speculation that the Dubs could use that pick as a trading piece for an established talent, but there’s been scant evidence they’ll be able to make that happen either.
Operating purely off positional need, the Warriors probably shouldn’t take LaMelo. Already deep at guard and wing and bereft of literally any rim protection, conventional wisdom would advise Golden State to use that pick on fellow top prospect James Wiseman or induce another team into a swap for their starting center. Besides, that positional misalignment alone could derail LaMelo’s career in so many ways. Will there be game minutes for him? How does he develop into an NBA talent without consistent playing time? Is consistent playing time for LaMelo even reasonable at this stage of his career, and especially for a team with title hopes? How does he respond when his playing time gets diminished? How does his father?
I won’t deny that using their draft selection on LaMelo is risky for the Warriors, but I’m opting to view the glass here as way more than half-full. With his size and skillset, LaMelo can immediately become the Shaun Livingston replacement the Dubs lacked last season — and while the vastly different temperaments between the two make this analogy somewhat imperfect, you’re telling me you can’t imagine a chastened, rookie LaMelo running the Warriors’ bench unit for 20 minutes a game and sliding into their reconstructed Death Lineup on those nights he’s playing well? LaMelo’s defensive effort has also been a source of critique thus far, but I remember much of the same being said about Ben Simmons as an NBA prospect, and he’s now rightly hailed as one of the league’s best defenders. If the Warriors’ culture is truly that dynamic and veteran defensive captain Draymond Green is truly that intimidating, LaMelo has no choice but to be at least serviceable on that end of the floor. His opportunity to play right away — and his career, to be very frank — might just depend on it.
Plus, this is likely Golden State’s best opportunity to chart a succession plan for its backcourt, with Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson only getting deeper into their 30s and both returning from their own respective season-long injuries. Much the way Sam Cassell and Cuttino Mobley once mentored a pre-injury Shaun Livingston (there goes that comparison again!), who better to teach LaMelo the nuances of the point guard position than Steph, and who better to clean up LaMelo’s fundamentals and shot selection than Klay? In fact, Shaun himself is a member of the Warriors’ front office now, and I’d reckon he can find some time to mentor the future of the franchise. If he’s a willing pupil, LaMelo can earn his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate from the same basketball institution, and probably the one best suited for his singular gifts. It’s almost too perfect to be a possibility. Almost.
The lone obstacle in the Warriors’ way of drafting LaMelo is the Minnesota Timberwolves, who, as you might’ve guessed, are in possession of the NBA draft’s number-one selection. And while LaMelo has been recently trending toward the very top of the draft board, I’m personally not seeing a match with Minnesota; the Wolves are just as deep at guard and wing as the Warriors, with neither the infrastructure nor prestige to meld that motley crew into anything coherent on a basketball court. I’m considering the idea of a LaMelo-D’Angelo Russell tandem even as I type this sentence, and I’ll take a hard pass, chief. It’s gonna be a no from me, dog. Not gonna be able to do it.
Make no mistake, LaMelo can have an awesome professional career with a number of NBA franchises; he’s already a genius-level passer, and teams up-and-down the league would be made better by his ingenuity alone. The Detroiter in me is praying he somehow falls to the Pistons at pick number seven, even as I worry about his development and maturation on their threadbare roster. But this Golden State opportunity is a layup for both LaMelo and the organization, a golden ticket for sustained success their front office absolutely needs to cash in.
Plus, you know the NBA becomes that much more fascinating with LaMelo Ball as the heir apparent to the Splash Brothers, especially given that origin story. Serendipity, I think they call it.