Lane Violation

Alexander Goot
Aug 9, 2017 · 9 min read

LaVar Ball’s antics have moved him from ‘amusing sideshow’ to ‘sexist heel’, but that doesn’t mean pretending he doesn’t exist.


I think it’s safe to say that the well-meaning, but rarely followed advice, “Don’t Feed The Trolls,” was officially laid to rest about a week ago in Santa Barbara, California.

That’s where, at the site of his ‘Flight School’ camp, six-time NBA Champion Michael Jordan decided to bite back at one-time Washington State Cougar LaVar Ball, who had previously claimed he’d be able to take His Airness in a game of one-on-one.

One would figure, given his status as, you know, quite possibly the greatest basketball player in history, an icon who transcended his sport and became a cultural touchstone, and someone who rewrote the rules of branding and commercial success in ways that are still reverberating today, if anyone had the credentials to tune out Mr. Big Baller Brand, to let his body of work stand for itself, to simply shake his head and keep it moving, it would be MJ himself.

And yet!

“It doesn’t deserve a response,” said Jordan after noting Ball’s paltry 2 points per game average as a college player, “but I’m [going to] give it to you because you asked the question. I don’t think he could beat me if I was one-legged.”

From there, you can probably figure out exactly what happened next. The crowd hooted and hollered, thrilled to see one of the most ubiquitous voices in the hoops orbit finally put in his place. Ball himself, of course, was quick with a response, telling the always available folks at TMZ Sports that he could take Jordan with one hand tied behind his back. And so, unsurprisingly, our aggregation economy cranked out a few dozen more posts off the most polarizing sports dad since Sam Moxon.


Generally speaking, since he first entered our sports atmosphere, LaVar Ball stories have fallen into one of two categories. First, there are the ridiculous, but ultimately harmless proclamations, like his ability to beat Jordan one-on-one, his claim that his son is a better player than two-time MVP Steph Curry, or his assertion that ‘808s and Heartbreak’ was superior to ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’. (Ok, fine, I made that last one up, but you had to think about it.)

Then there’s the second group, the stories that can’t be dismissed with a mere wave of the hand and an eye-roll, the ones that are well and truly problematic. Like, for example, running a female referee out of a game at the Adidas Summer Championships, before reprising his sexist “Stay In Your Lane” catchphrase, and suggesting that she ‘“wasn’t ready” to be officiating basketball at that level.

Lately, you may have noticed, that second category has begun to overpower the first, and as a result, LaVar Ball has gone from occasionally grating but often entertaining sideshow, to something more malignant, an actively arrogant and sexist bully. That’s what forced Adidas to attempt damage control, apologizing for giving in to his demands and removing the referee from the game. It’s what prompted ESPN’s Jay Bilas to declare himself finished with the, “misogynistic buffoon unworthy of my time.” And it’s undoubtedly what compelled Sports Illustrated Media Columnist Richard Deitsch to send the following tweet, lamenting the fact that the LaVar Ball Show won’t be coming to a close any time soon.

And look, I get it. No really, I do. If LaVar Ball is a monster, he is, most certainly, a Frankenstein of the sports media’s own creation, brought to life via endless appearances on studio shows, radio programs, and the more than occasional sideline interview. LaVar, as far as I can tell, never brought his own microphone, but the world was all too happy to hand him one, back when his biggest crimes were play-fighting with Charles Barkley, and taking ‘crazy dad shouting at his kid’s pickup games’ to the biggest, brightest stage.

But I would argue that now that LaVar has shown us his true, not-so-woke colors, sticking our heads in the sand isn’t the answer either. In part, that’s because the Big Baller Brand toothpaste is already out of the tube. (No, he’s not actually selling that… yet.) Lonzo has arrived, after all, and while it’s never a good idea to put that much stock in summer league, I think it’s safe to say that the 19-year-old has the handle and the court vision to stick around for a while. Like it or not, LaVar is a part of the Lakers rookie’s story, thanks to his incredible knack for showmanship, media manipulation, and viral celebrity. (In 2017, what other kind is there?) When you take a look at the amount of coverage Lonzo has generated compared to his rookie peers, and the major jump in this year’s summer league ratings, it’s hard not to conclude that LaVar’s tactics have had the desired effect.

Even if we could just stick our fingers in our ears and pretend that LaVar Ball didn’t exist, doing so would be a major mistake, because his story, like most, is a little more complicated than ‘villainous cliche’. For starters, it’s worth reexamining the moment that birthed the obnoxious “Stay In Yo’ Lane” tagline in the first place, the now infamous interview with “The Herd’s” Colin Cowherd, and Kristine Leahy. Shortly after he strutted onto the set, it didn’t take long for Ball to make it quite clear he was no fan of Leahy’s, something that, as radio host Charlamagne The God and others pointed out, might have had something to do with Leahy’s comments about the Ball family patriarch in a segment days earlier.

“All three sons… How rare is it that all three kids want to do the exact same thing? They’re being forced to do it. They’re being told ‘you will start basketball at age six’, like Lonzo told us. And whenever you ask him a question, I think he said what, five words, and he looked terrified, whenever he’s talking. I asked have you ever had a disagreement with your father, and he said no. And everyone at this table, we know, you at one point or another disagree with your parent, unless you’re afraid to disagree with your parent, and to me, it looks like he’s terrified to go against anything his father says.”

So, to summarize, Leahy took a few anecdotal observations, spun them into a rather generalized picture of what the Ball’s family dynamics must be, and came away convinced that LaVar’s sons are in fact, terrified of him, before sharing those conclusions on a national television show. It’s the sort of presumptive hyperbole that any number of male sports commentators have been trading in for years now, so I suppose it counts as a weird sort of progress that Leahy was afforded her turn. But it’s also rather understandable why LaVar Ball may have arrived in studio with an axe to grind.

Now, to be clear, Ball could not possibly have handled the situation worse. Rather than substantively address his issues with Leahy’s comments, and perhaps explain why it was unfair to make assumptions about his family, or parenting style, he chose instead to rudely freeze the co-host out with his body language, and christen his nauseating t-shirt slogan. The message, delivered in no uncertain terms, was not that there was something wrong with what Leahy had said, but that, because of her gender, or status, she had no right to say anything at all. It was plainly repugnant, and given how obviously he operated from the same playbook at the Adidas tournament, Ball has clearly failed to learn his lesson when it comes to keeping the chauvinism and intimidation out of his usual bluster.

All the more reason then, for everyone in sports media to continue to cover him, to make that point, to drive it home, rather than to simply shrug our shoulders and walk away.


The problem, one that extends beyond LaVar Ball, and the realm of sports more broadly, is that somewhere along the line, the world lost the ability to tell someone’s story, without allowing them to become the story. I was, perhaps unsurprisingly, reminded of this when I first suggested, on the electric twitter machine, that ignoring Ball was not the proper course of action.

And yes, here again, I should say that I totally get it. It’s easy to look at a bombastic, arrogant, unapologetic, shameless self-promoter like LaVar Ball and see shades of the man who took the reigns of our democracy, some 200 days ago, in this dystopia we now call home. (And you don’t have to take my word for it!)

We made LaVar, so goes the logic, just like we made President Pitching Wedge, and perhaps if we’d starved them of oxygen, just like smothering a grease fire, neither one would have such a prominent place in our lives today. I understand the impulse, and I would say that the Trump parallels are indeed instructive, though more than a little unfair. (The Ball family, after all, has not used the United States government as a means to enrich a family business built largely on grift and fraud. But I digress.)

In the ceaseless circus that is our current media landscape, we’ve forgotten how to cover someone without ceding control of the narrative. That’s why, as an audience, we’re understandably skeptical when Megyn Kelly sits down with Alex Jones, Bill Maher has a little chat with Milo Yiannopoulos, and Sir Charles makes time in his television program for Richard Spencer. We’re told that all of these characters, detestable as they may be, are important to understand, given the scope of their influence. And while there’s some truth in that premise, far too often the final product is a soft focus feature that comes across as downright chummy, offering an even bigger platform, rather than the cross examination that these purveyors of hate and ignorance deserve.

A confrontational interview, a combative investigator, a press corps that actually has the stones to do something when their cameras are powered down, all of this is, of course, a fantasy in this day and age, now that the media has been beaten into submission not merely by threats and lawsuits, but also by the very fact that it depends on a steady stream of incredible quotes and outrageous moments from the news-makers themselves. Journalism is fueled by a steady stream of access, and that’s probably why, whether it’s a novelty like LaVar Ball, or, you know, the somehow actual leader of the free world, nobody has any idea how to proceed, and the end result is a thoroughly unsatisfying exercise.


So what’s the solution? It’s not all that complicated, really. The answer isn’t to stop covering LaVar Ball, it’s just to do it better. Sometimes that means calling him to account, as Bilas, Tom Ziller, Beth Cunniff, and others have done in recent days. Sometimes it means reporting and commentary that digs a bit deeper than the latest wild rant, and actually provides some new insight on his motivations, his relationships, and his place in the basketball landscape. And yes, sometimes it means just flat out not booking the guy, as ESPN’s Michelle Beadle demonstrated back in May.

That’s the whole key, really. It’s realizing that you can cover someone without taking cover, without giving them the keys to the store, and turning over your studio, your airwaves, your autonomy. These days, LaVar Ball has plenty to answer for, and it’s the media’s job to go get those answers, not to run and hide and hope that nobody will notice the role that it played, that we all did, in the rise of this peculiar phenomenon, for better and for worse.

Because make no mistake, the story of Ball’s sexism and misogyny needs to be told. But it’s also not the only one. There’s the dad from Chino Hills, with the audacity to think he could turn all three of his sons into pro prospects, and the ability to pull it off. There’s the gifted hype man, able to conjure up incredible amounts of attention and curiosity at a time when they’ve never been more valuable. And then there’s the version that I must admit, I find the most compelling personally, LaVar the entrepreneur, the man with the gall to ask why, exactly, he and his sons should simply be employees, rather than going out and building something of their own. It’s the sort of radical belief that could reshape an entire industry, and have implications that go well beyond footwear.

Will it work? I have absolutely no idea.

But I know I want to see how this story unfolds.

From The Sidelines

Commentary, criticism, and collateral damage at the nexus of sports and society.

Alexander Goot

Written by

Sports TV producer, writer at The Cauldron, The Comeback, Vice Sports, Sports On Earth. alexander.goot@gmail.com

From The Sidelines

Commentary, criticism, and collateral damage at the nexus of sports and society.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade