LaVar Ball guest stars on a '5th Quarter' episode about a boy banned from UCLA
In case you haven’t heard, LaVar Ball — self-promoting father of Los Angeles Lakers rookie Lonzo Ball — has pulled his sons LaMelo and LiAngelo out of high school and UCLA, respectively. He then signed them both to Lonzo’s agent, effectively ending any chance they will receive college scholarships again.
So, it seems appropriate that LaVar and Lonzo would appear on an episode of “The 5th Quarter,” starring Marlon Wayans and Topanga from “Boy Meets World,” about a 7-year-old boy named Fetus Jones who has his UCLA “commitment” revoked because his dad got him a shoe deal in Myanmar:
You may recall LaVar essentially did the same for his son. Big Baller Brand teamed with a Chinese company to release signature shoes for Lonzo and LaMelo that sold for $495 and $395, respectively. This created eligibility concerns for 16-year-old LaMelo two years before he was to play for UCLA.
“He’s going to have a shoe,” LaVar told ESPN.com in October. “NCAA ain’t going to tell me s***. Because they’re not my boss. That’s what they do, but they’re not going to be like, ‘Oh, LaVar, you can’t bring that shoe out until we tell you.’ What? Something that I’m doing for my family? That’s mine? I’m not under no umbrella.”
LaVar has since insisted LaMelo and LiAngelo will play professionally overseas until he can figure out how to get them to the Lakers, too, although there are serious questions about whether either is good enough to even play in Europe. So, this part of “The 5th Quarter” script should ring true for the Balls:
Reality show producer: “What if [the ban] doesn’t get lifted?”
Fetus Jones’ dad: “Then he’ll go play ball in Europe, straight out of high school.”
Reality show producer: “What if he’s not good enough?”
Fetus Jones’ dad: “Goddamnit, he is good enough.”
LaVar and Lonzo seemed to be in on the joke, describing the elder Jones’ behavior, which included “starting a fake feud to make headlines” and turning his children into commodities, as “undignified.”
How much they understand the joke is up for debate. NBA players DeMarcus Cousins, Courtney Lee, Chandler Parsons, Iman Shumpert and Andre Roberson guest-star on the episode and ridicule both the boy and his dad. Roberson even goes so far as calling the father “a bad person, but a great dad.”
So, in essence, LaVar and Lonzo are also laughing at the fact that the former is being portrayed in front of a large audience as “high-maintenance,” a terrible businessman and even “a charlatan” who potentially destroyed his son’s best chance at a free education and robbed him of his childhood.
Watch the entire “Fetus Jones” episode of “The 5th Quarter” below. Catch other episodes on Yahoo View and go90.
