Former ESPN Reporter Apologizes for His LaVar Ball Coverage - 'I Completely Regret It'
One of the most dangerous mistakes a media outlet can make when pushing a narrative is to have the reporter tasked with keeping kayfabe free to speak his mind once he doesn’t work for that media outlet anymore.
This is the exact predicament ESPN has found themselves in after their relentless pushing of the LaVar Ball story, beyond the simply relevant fact of Ball’s son Lonzo playing for the Lakers.
Jeff Goodman, exiled to Lithuania to cover the circus at BC Prienai-Birstonas Vytautas, now hosts a podcast with CLNS Media.
And on his Good N’ Plenty show, Goodman did not pull punches.
Goodman had “SportsCenter” Scott Van Pelt on to talk about LaVar and the whole circus surrounding him. The exchange, in which Van Pelt outright called Ball’s bluster “nonsense,” is the kind of blistering commentary that only works when the two guys involved are one of ESPN’s untouchable ratings drivers — and a guy who no longer has to answer to the suits in Bristol.
The relevant bit is simply a masterpiece.
Goodman said, “I want to apologize to you because you always told me, ‘I don’t want to deal with that guy. I don’t want to promote him.’ And I kind of was probably the start of the LaVar Ball Promotional Tour. And now, I completely regret it. So, I want to apologize to you for that as I saw that because I never thought it would get to where it is. And now I feel …”
SVP said, “You owe me no apology. I just chose, at an early stage, early on in his son’s freshman year at UCLA (the only Ball who ever made it there for any period of time or made it on the floor at all) … just he’s not a story to me. That stuff doesn’t interest me. And so, I kind of tapped out of all of it because as I said on the air, I don’t find it to be interesting. It’s nonsense. I mean, talking junk about LeBron James and continuing to do so. You know, whatever man.”
Goodman responded, “And why the hell would you do it now when your son is on the same team as LeBron James?”
“For now,” SVP replied.
“How disrespectful. He’s just not very bright. Ultimately that’s just what I’ll say: He’s just not very bright. Because if he was, he wouldn’t put all three of his kids in harm’s way like he has,” Goodman said.
Let’s just say that Jeff Goodman won’t be receiving any Christmas cards from the Ball family anytime soon.
Goodman and Ball the Elder have crossed swords before over Goodman’s attempts to actually treat the craft of journalism like a serious endeavor and not an arm of the subject’s public relations department.
Goodman published Ball’s comments last year that Lakers coach Luke Walton had “lost the locker room,” making public something that had, after all, been said on the record in the context of a greater interview about Ball, his son and the then-struggling Lakers as they limped through a 35-47 season in 2017-18.
The exchange led Warriors coach — and Walton’s former boss — Steve Kerr to call Ball “the Kardashian of the NBA,” and with Lonzo having one of the worst rookie seasons shooting the ball in NBA history, especially for a No. 2 overall draft pick, that’s the stuff that ends careers as soon as the guaranteed money runs out on a rookie deal.
Lonzo was already heavily involved in trade rumors as the Lakers tried to acquire Kawhi Leonard from the Spurs, and the fact that the Spurs weren’t interested — choosing instead to send Leonard to the Toronto Raptors — speaks volumes of how little they consider Lonzo to be the generational talent his father thinks he is.
For the guy ESPN tasked to cover LaVar Ball to slam him like this, and for ESPN’s biggest media figure to go on his show and echo those sentiments, effectively calling LaVar Ball a nobody without fear of backlash from his own corporate overlords is nothing short of a disaster for LaVar Ball.
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