Ball brothers' Lithuanian club will be playing in something called the Big Baller Brand Challenge Games
It’s a Ball family world and Lithuania is just living in it. On Friday morning, Lithuania’s Prienu Vytautas-Birštonas club welcomed the Ball brothers, LiAngelo, 19, and LaMelo, 16, to their new home in a lower-level Lithuanian League. Their introduction could only be described as a three-ring circus. On Friday evening, Vytautas added a new level of weirdness to this Ball family experiment by withdrawing from the Baltic League’s domestic competition in the middle of the season. Vytautas will instead compete in the Lithuania League and host the Big Baller Brand Challenge Games, a five-game exhibition sponsored by Lavar Ball’s namesake apparel company.
In another plot twist, Vytautas just withdrew from the Baltic Basketball League in the middle of the season and will organize the Big Baller Brand Challenge Games, a series of five friendly games, instead.
— Simonas Baranauskas (@LithuaniaBasket) January 6, 2018
The Big Baller Brand Challenge Games will feature Vytautas’ LKL rivals Dzūkija, as well as four lower division teams, including the reserve squads of top Lithuanian clubs Žalgiris and Lietuvos Rytas.
— Simonas Baranauskas (@LithuaniaBasket) January 6, 2018
The Ball brothers made have relocated to a remote part of the world, but they’re making the best of the situation. Lithuania is a basketball-crazed country, however, LiAngelo and LaMelo’s Big Baller Brand Challenge debut games will be broadcast globally on Facebook. The Big Baller Brand Challenge’s Facebook Watch programming is the continuation of an ongoing partnership with the Ball Family and Facebook, which may bid for rights to much more major pro sports television rights in the near future.
Facebook Watch aired the first season of Ball in the Family, a reality show featuring LaVar, LiAngelo, Lonzo, LaMelo’s and their mother Tina. Last summer, 80,000 people watched LaMelo Ball take on Zion Williamson in an AAU basketball exhibition, proving that an audience exists for low-quality basketball featuring one or more of the Ball brothers.
LiAngelo and LaMelo are expected to play significant minutes for Vytautas according to head coach Virginijus Seskus, the games will be broadcast in English, and according to Vytautas’ press release, the Ball brothers should make their debut next Tuesday.
The Ball brothers were supposed to make the trip to Vilnius for today’s game, but remained in Prienai after the opposing team, Lietuvos Rytas, didn’t initially allow the cameras from the Ball reality show in the arena.
— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanESPN) January 6, 2018
The games tip off Tuesday, Jan. 9 at 1:30pm ET, as Vytautas plays Kauno Žalgiris-2. The full five-game broadcast schedule is as follows:
Those aren’t the caliber of opponents, Vytautas vowed to schedule, but it always seemed unlikely that they’d be able to attract elite EuroLeague teams. Last month, Lavar also announced his intentions to launch a league for high school graduates. Next week’s Challenge may also serve as a test run for the viability of that league. Or it may simply be a vanity exercise.
The Ball saga is a never ending one, but at least debate may be on the verge of switching to one about their talent and basketball development instead of their brand exposure. Amid all the hoopla and expectations, this challenge puts even more pressure on LiAngelo and LaMelo to put up or shut up when they perform as professionals for the first time.
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DJ Dunson is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at dunsnchecksin@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or Facebook.
