Ex-Coach Rips LaVar Ball, His Sons and Their 'Dying TV Show'
What if I told you that LaVar Ball’s entire basketball impresario career makes him a hoops answer to Captain Kirk?
After all, like the Starship Enterprise on the original series, Ball and his crew of sons go to a new place every episode, cause a bunch of mayhem, then cheerfully trot off to the next negative space wedgie of the week to cause more wacky hijinks.
And as for the audience, we never have to concern ourselves with what Capt. Ball and his bunch leave behind in their wake.
Well, the folks at BC Prienai Vytautas aren’t willing to let us forget them that easily, and they’re none too pleased with the Federation.
The Ball brothers’ former coach, Virginijus Seskus, released a statement, and it rips LaVar and his sons, particularly calling out youngest son LaMelo for his lack of work ethic and entitled attitude.
Ball Brothers former coach in Lithuania finally fires back:
“The most disappointing fact was that they had no inner drive to become better.” – Virginijus Seskus pic.twitter.com/TvdyyYcdme
— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanHoops) August 23, 2018
“The first and most crucial mistake we made was allowing them, especially LaVar, (to) think that they are in charge of the club — its decisions, its plans and even the game,” Seskus said. “His boys were nowhere near the level of the LKL, let alone NBA, which [the] league obviously understands, seeing the draft outcome.
“And the most disappointing fact was that they had no inner drive to become better. And when they saw it was going nowhere, they started destroying the club, not paying out prize money to the Big Baller Brand tournament winners, etc.”
Up to this point, we haven’t had that cherry on the sundae for LaVar Ball, the notion that his Big Baller Brand is in fact a con game that stiffs anyone dumb enough to do business with them.
Indeed, that would seem to paint LaVar Ball less as Captain Kirk and more as one of the shifty, dishonest Ferengi on “Deep Space Nine.”
The coach outright called LaMelo Ball “lazy” in a later, clarifying interview, before defiantly commenting that the Balls are “finished” with Vytautas and adding one more parting shot:
“The club survived and that is the most important fact,” Seskus said.
In truth, “survived” may be a bit of a relative term.
Lithuanian basketball, much like soccer in Europe, operates on a promotion and relegation system, and Prienai-Vytautas is no longer playing its games in the LKL first division.
Instead, they’re playing second-rate outfits in the Baltic Basketball League, the equivalent of if the Phoenix Suns, instead of drafting DeAndre Ayton, instead got to play their games in the NBA G-League while the G-League champion Austin Spurs got to play in the big leagues against the likes of Stephen Curry and LeBron James.
And sure, the team will probably be able to regroup, fighting their way back into the LKL the way that soccer teams occasionally use relegation as a wake-up call and soon thereafter win their way back to the top flight. But it sounds like the club’s reputation and finances took one heck of a hit there when the starship Big Baller tried to boldly go where no baller has gone before.
And as the team digs out of the rubble, there’s just one thing left to say: Peace and long life, BC Prienai. Live long and prosper.
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