Lavar Ball, the father of UCLA freshman star Lonzo Ball as well as high school standouts LiAngelo and LaMelo, has been in the news quite frequently of late. A few weeks ago, he made the bold observation that if his son, Lonzo, was to replace Steph Curry on the Warriors, the team would be the same, if not better. That’s a crazy thing to say about a kid that’s still just a teenager, and has not even played a single minute in the NBA.
Last month, Lavar Ball said that if Lonzo did not sign with Nike, Adidas, or Under Armour when he entered the NBA, that he would sign with the Big Baller Brand. Lavar filed for, and received, last week, the trademark for the phrase that was applied for this past year. Though the trademark has been received for the phrase, the trademark for the logo has not been approved. The logo features three B’s for the three sons, as well as the motto “Built for This”. The deal that Lavar would supposedly consider fair would be $1 Billion dollars for the trio. He added that he would accept $100 million dollars a year instead of the full amount up front. To put this in perspective, Nike pays Michael Jordan $100 million plus every year just for the Jordan brand, while Lebron recently signed a lifetime $1 Billion deal. The next closest shoe deal is Kevin Duran, who makes around $30 million a year.
Personally, I think this seems a bit soon, considering the oldest of the three sons hasn’t even left college, and the youngest still has two years left of high school. It seems a bit dangerous to be talking about these types of things in public, and the temptation to accept money for anything whatsoever before even just one of the three are declared for the Draft could lead to ineligibility and could be a poor look for the families image. While he seemed serious, because the sons are so spread apart in age, the earliest they could be packaged into any deal would be 2020, when the youngest would then be declaring for, and preparing for the draft and entering the NBA.