LaMelo Ball is set to be a top 3 pick in tonight’s NBA Draft. Lonzo Ball is the starting point guard for the New Orleans Pelicans. And LiAngelo Ball gets videos like these posted about him:
Gelo in the lab putting it DOWN 😤 @LiAngeloBall pic.twitter.com/UfCNYfTjSO
— Overtime (@overtime) November 12, 2020
Gelo Ball stuck on AUTOMATIC 👀 (via @LiAngeloBall) pic.twitter.com/4FuHROljSe
— Overtime (@overtime) July 29, 2020
A lob to himself and some uncontested threes. The telltale sign of a player that everyone wants to see in the league, but will surely never make it. There are thousands of basketball players around the country doing exactly those things on their lunch break at LA Fitness without a single camera rolling. But they don’t get the satisfaction of being the most underwhelming Ball brother.
What bothers me most about those videos isn’t what he’s doing. I can’t dunk, consecutive three pointers have often eluded me, so I’m in no position to critique what he is doing. The problem is what he isn’t doing. Learning finance, marketing, growing his Tik Tok account, streaming Warzone. All the things that you absolutely have to do when you’re clearly not going to be as big as your brothers.
Look at Cooper Manning, who knew he wasn’t going to make the NFL (due to spine issues in which one hit from Aaron Donald would render him paralyzed for life) and focused on other areas: investment banking, and raising a child to be better at sports than you:
Arch Manning throws five touchdowns in one quarter, sits rest of way in Newman’s 76-0 victory.🤯 @NewmanAthletes
FULL STORY + VIDEO ⬇️
✍️🎥: https://t.co/GKItg3RaEH pic.twitter.com/j17f5wAyFw
— MaxPreps (@MaxPreps) November 14, 2020
Or look at Jackson Mahomes, who also knew he wasn’t going to be an NFL quarterback and, like Cooper, runs a similar risk of having his back blown out. He focused on doing the important stuff, the nitty gritty things such as dancing on Tik Tok. Here is where I would embed a video of a Jackson Mahomes Tik Tok, but I don’t want to search for it, and do you really want to see it?
The point is that Lonzo Ball is a 6’5 230lb shooting guard who will absolutely never have a place in the NBA. He is in the G-League for the Thunder affiliate currently, and that is on name only. I’m pretty sure Snoop Dogg could get a spot on a G-League roster if he asked nicely.
LiAngelo needs to focus on the next step in his career, alongside his father, hyping up family that is much better at basketball than he is.
