LaVar Ball celebrates Lonzo's birthday by telling him to give his money to Big Baller Brand
LaVar Ball just won’t quit. Even on his kid’s birthday.
The patriarch is back at it, pitching his star sons on investing in Big Baller Brand — despite New Orleans Pelicans point guard Lonzo Ball famously distancing himself from the company after former business partner Alan Foster’s alleged seven-figure embezzlement.
The company took hit after hit last year, from its appearance on clearance racks to an “F” from the Better Business Bureau to the acknowledgment the ZO2 shoes fell apart a quarter minutes into use. Lonzo, a majority owner, and the youngest Ball, LaMelo, separated from the company while LiAngelo stayed onboard. The website went dark, but is back featuring LaVar and LiAngelo.
Everything with the Ball family is on tape, so in last week’s episode “Ballin’ in the Big Easy” viewers got to see LaVar and his wife, Tina, visit Lonzo in New Orleans for the season opener last fall. It also happened to be his birthday (Oct. 27), and LaVar’s gift was ... a basket of Big Baller Brand gear with a sales pitch on the side.
LaVar pitched his son on the additions to the ZO2 line — the shoes he put on blast — with a T-shirt that read “Family Don’t Break Up.” And at a different dinner that same time period, he went into the sales pitch again and said his sons should put their money together to build the company back up.
“The more special you get, all these people will be coming in with all this other (expletive) because everybody want a piece. What we got going on is gonna be a billion-dollar thing — everybody gotta put their teeth in it somewhere. And as a family, we just gotta stick together. Like, OK, we good. Put your money over there. My money over here … Melo over there. And we put all our money together, that’s where the venture capitalists come in and say, ‘We got a hundred mill for y’all.’”
Tina’s look is ... something.
LaVar gave his pitch after saying all he and Lonzo talk about is the brand and basketball (oddly mentioning he doesn’t talk “about no birds and the bees and all that —.”
Lonzo said he wasn’t surprised his father wants all of the children to invest in the company. When asked if he lost a lot of money the last time around, Lonzo said, “you could say that.”
“Depends on who you’re talking to,” he said in the producer interview.
This week’s episode focused on the upcoming relaunch of the brand.
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