Love him, hate him, respect him or despise him, it all boils down to the same thing. You’re talking about him. Therein lies the blueprint of LaVar Ball’s plan to get all three of his sons in the NBA.
The more attention he can bring to himself, the more he can funnel in the direction of his talented, basketball playing sons. Eventually.
Count Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as one of those who isn’t a fan of what LaVar Ball is doing to college basketball, specifically.
During an appearance on 97.3 The Fanatic, Abdul-Jabbar issued an honest assessment of his feelings for LaVar Ball:
Obviously everyone knows about his son because he has been able to hype him. I don’t think that’s good for college basketball. College basketball is starting look like — it doesn’t look good. It just looks like a huckster show. And that bothers me. When you have people go to those lengths to promote their kid, I don’t get it.
A lot of older basketball legends and stars seem to feel this way. In the NBA, there seems to be an understanding that LaVar is a dog-and-pony show that is only trying to drum up more business for his Big Baller Brand.
The success of his eldest son, Lonzo, is integral to that.
NCAA basketball already has the reputation of being nothing more than a minor league system for the NBA. Abdul-Jabbar’s standards, it’s on the verge of being coming a “huckster show.”
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