Lonzo Ball finally tells LaVar the two words everyone has been waiting to hear
Of all the people telling LaVar Ball to stay in his lane, the last one you’d ever expect to hear doing it would be his son Lonzo.
Yet that’s exactly what the Lakers rookie did, telling his dad to “be humble” and in the process not only seemingly asking the impossible of the attention-addicted LaVar but also saying what just about everyone in America was thinking.
Lonzo went on Paramount Network’s “Lip Sync Battle” and lip-synced the words to Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble”:
LaVar, perhaps operating on the principle that any chance to be on national TV is a good one, found the whole thing hilarious.
When asked why he chose Lamar’s jam for his performance, Lonzo stole the show with a cutting remark:
“He talks a lot. You gotta be humble sometimes. You gotta sit down sometimes and just watch me work.”
We’d all love to watch you work, Lonzo, except you’ve been injured since at least Dec. 23 and inactive since Jan. 13 with a sprained MCL.
Ball is expected to return after the All-Star break; he was replaced in the Rising Stars game on Friday by the Kings’ DeAaron Fox.
Meanwhile, there’s the bigger problem of Lonzo’s shooting numbers being absolutely atrocious in his rookie season; he’s hitting just 35.6 percent of his shots overall, 30.3 percent from three and a ghastly 48 percent from the free throw line.
The Lakers are 8-13 without him, though, against 15-21 with him in the lineup, and there will be a great deal of controversy when Ball comes back to find that Isaiah Thomas has designs on the starter’s role and a reputation forged in Cleveland for coming down hard on teammates he feels are performing in a way detrimental to the goal of winning basketball games.
Which, in turn, means that the Rubber and Glue principle might apply here; anything Lonzo says might just bounce off LaVar and stick to him.
While his father is off in Lithuania trying to import mineral water and play head coach to a Baltic G-League team while damaging the NBA prospects of his other two sons, Lonzo has to overcome the simple statistical fact that if it weren’t for Markelle Fultz completely forgetting how to shoot a basketball, he’d be the leading contender for biggest bust of the 2017 draft.
After all, Ball’s numbers are even worse than 2015 seventh-overall pick Emmanuel Mudiay, whose 36.4 percent shooting and 31.9 from three in his rookie season in Denver eventually heralded his being unceremoniously shipped out of town to the Knicks after losing his starting job to Jamal Murray, whom the Nuggets had to draft with the seventh pick a year later in acknowledgment that a point guard who can’t shoot is a waste of cap space.
So let’s all just sit down and watch him work, because even though he said what every one of us wanted to hear him say to dear old dad, his choice of words might come back to bite him in the end.
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