At the adidas Uprising Summer Championships on Friday LaVar Ball berated officials and inevitably got a technical foul for arguing with an official — but that’s usual fare for Ball. Then, for the second time this week, Lavar Ball threatened to pull his AAU team off the court.
That is also usual fare for LaVar Ball — last weekend, he forfeited a game when he was hit with a technical foul. However, according to Yahoo! Sports, when Ball threatened to pull his team off the court yesterday if the official wasn’t replaced adidas removed the D1 referee who had given him the technical foul.
LaVar Ball goes CRAZY and gets another tech ? pic.twitter.com/MOtUS5MFD1
— Overtime (@overtime) July 28, 2017
“She’s gotta go,” he repeated before she was replaced, according to ESPN. According to reports, the official was visibly shaken and replaced by a male official.
LaVar Ball just picked up a technical. Points to the ref and looks at the crowd, "We need to get someone else in here."
— Jeff Borzello (@jeffborzello) July 28, 2017
But the madness doesn’t stop there: LaVar Ball got hit with a second technical foul and was ejected from the game. He refused to leave the floor, and pulled his team off the court again, so organizers called off the game. You can take a look at the footage below
Adidas said it was their decision to replace the referee. Said there was a history between ref and LaVar — she officiated Wednesday's game.
— Jeff Borzello (@jeffborzello) July 28, 2017
“There was some miscommunication,” Chris Rivers, adidas director of global basketball sports marketing, told ESPN. “The NBA don’t put certain people with certain guys, either. If there’s a history or miscommunication, that happens.”
After the game, ESPN caught up with LaVar Ball and asked why he said the female official “had a vendetta against him.” Ball said some incredibly misogynistic things, namely, that she was not qualified and out of shape. Just take a look.
The D1 referee officiating the game was supplied by Court Club Elite, a referee training program owned and operated by former NBA ref Ed Rush — 32-time NBA Finals referee and former NBA Director of Officials Ed Rush. Thus, she was more than qualified, and if you recall LaVar Ball’s appearance on WWE RAW — when he ripped off his shirt and puffed himself up — he definitely didn’t look “in shape.”
According to ESPN, Court Club Elite had initially pushed for an all-female crew to ref Friday’s game. A source told ESPN that before tipoff, a “compromise” had been reached — two women and one man would officiate the game. However, come tipoff Friday morning, the officiating crew featured two men and one woman.
Amid LaVar Ball’s hateful remarks in the ESPN video above is the phrase “she needs to stay in her lane.” The phrase echoes LaVar Ball’s combative and rude remarks towards Kristine Leahy on her own radio show.
In that interview, he turned his back to Leahy, refused to speak to her, and repeatedly told her to “stay in her lane.” He ignored her questions and threatened her. We have seen this behavior before.
After the story about yesterday’s fiasco broke, ESPN’s Jemele Hill had several important things to say on The Six. You can watch that clip below.
What do you think about LaVar Ball’s behavior? Thoughts on adidas’ part in this story? Let’s discuss respectfully in the comments below.
Source: ESPN / Yahoo! Sports
Lavar is sexist as hell. Hopefully his sons don’t continue that deep-seeded hatred. Good read and appreciate the conscious take.
So sick of this guy and his family. They’re like the Kardashians of the sports world.
This clown is ruining basketball.
Shame on Adidas for that move. I read about this on espn earlier and just shook my head.
To disrespect a referee in any way is betrayal of our sport.
If a ref is really bad at his job he won’t get any better from barking at him. This was never the case and it never will be. That behavior is useless and against the general opinion it never has something to do with sticking up for the own players and always has so something to do with the own ego which should be in control if you decide to take part in a team activity of any kind. Player of coach.
Any atempt to speak to a ref during a game is completely unnesessary and unsportsmanlike. I’m coaching for 26 years now and the only way i ever spoke to a ref was when a ref came to me after the game and asked for some constructive feedback.
My players are not allowed to speak to the refs apart from introductions before the game. If a player can’t follow this rule he doesn’t play for me any more.
I’m not liking at all the direction our sport is heading to. It seems to me that somewhere down the line we will have the same shameful standards like today in soccer where ever call from the ref is followed by a group of players running to the ref and start acting and shouting.
Over here in Europe we have many bad coaches no doubt but one thing is for sure Lavar Ball would never get a licence to coach in any sport over here.
Is really anybody allowed to coach a team at the AAU level?
If that is the case than the solution would be easy. Stop that nonsense. Fix the rules. Start giving coaching licenses only to candidates that pass a test on social competence and basketball tactics and techniques.
If a coach can’t behave in a repectful manner how in the world can parents trust such a person with their own kids? And what do you think as a parent your kids are learning from such behaviour? The only reason i can think of (and it’s a bad one) is that all these parents are in no way educated enough to act in the interest of their child. But it seems that the second there is a chance to potentially earn some money nobody is able to think straight. That’s a real shame.
Everything you’ve stated is complete bullshit, and is the main reason people who founded the USA fought to get away from the crown. People have a right to question authority, especially if that authority has an agenda that goes against fairness for all. If that ref came into the game with an agenda of showing “lavar ball” how tough an individual she could be, then just like a male ref, that ref should be challenged in regard to doing their job objectively.
On another note, I want Lavar Ball to win, but I do feel that he gets in his own way. His kids are successful, and the prospect of a Black owned business making waves in a racist culture that promotes stereotypical behaviors, is quite promising to me. The hope for me is that all Black athletes get behind Ball and what he is doing, then moving away from the status quo, and really upsetting the apple cart. Micheal Jordan is the ONLY Black owner in American professional sports, of which the majority are Black athletes being the main attraction. I do not want to read shit about Ball being sexist, especially against White women, when it has been a sexist and racist system that has created him. Why don’t you ask Melania Trump if she is comfortable with it? The issue is, for me it seems, that Ball isn’t moving in the direction toward, and then speaking of, that sort of movement. He has the platform now, and he has the momentum, but he is fucking up by not speaking to the issue of doing for self, and in the larger picture, Black empowerment. I say all that to say that I hope that he does not drop the “Ball”.
Everyone’s trying to pull any antagonist narrative against him, especially when Leahy tried so hard to flip him into being a sexist. AAU coaches without the spotlight can be just as obnoxious. NBA players and coaches can be just as bad. On top of that, she was a returning ref and to say refs don’t hold grudges isn’t entirely accurate. We’ve been seeing it in one perspective/narrative.
Imagine the possibility that LaVar and BBB are being seen as an asset by a major company. LaMelo is a really iffy talent yet look how much attention he can draw. It’s not the most ethical way about it, they haven’t won my business, but it’s working out for them — with so many people thinking/wishing they’d flop. In the nature of…cut-throat business, they’re gaining ground.
Of course, LaVar had the controversy coming in doing this — that’s what happens with spotlight —, but there’s a fine line in drawing up who he actually is as a person. A personality, anyone can make that out; but saying extreme crap like “he scares his sons to death!”, and is a pure sexist is media outlets and onlookers indulging in their own prejudices. He’s about to have all his kids ride into UCLA, one’s already a Laker who has shown promise. Kids never went to jail. I’m not sure what his police record is, but we haven’t heard a word. He’s done all he could to take care of his wife and keep her out of the media BS. He’s been talking for his kids just so he absorbs the scrutiny.
You think he’s joking when he says “Lonzo will let his game speak”? Lonzo’s been talking like a monotonous 2K MyPlayer in interviews to play it safe. Yeah, seems like LaVar wrote a lot of checks, but look how stupid other “matured” NBA players are in expressing how bad they want to take down Lonzo. I mean….because of his dad who’s not even on the court? Joke’s on them. “Plain old dumb LaVar Ball” has become an NBA headline before he had any actual connection to the NBA.
I won’t rule out that maybe Adidas was flexing a bit against integrity, but with that comes another possible reality: his brand has a commanding presence. People are filming him and the team before and after games until they leave the parking lot. It’s not so crazy to think that after Summer League, and the media presence, that LaVar will successfully get his son(s) a more lucrative deal than most rookies can land. I wouldn’t say 3 billion dollars, but that was always ridiculous to buy into.
+1
Interesting situation though
Isn’t the fact he got ejected by the ref he approved of, right after, kind of making it hard for you to challenge the point that Lavar had a point, shouldn’t it have gone better after they switched refs?
How so? You can switch refs/jobs/homes —anything, and things might not actually get “better” overall; or in this case, he wasn’t going to be invulnerable to ejection/techs. It wouldn’t necessarily take away from a point about the previous situation. If we had to dissect his behavior towards the substitute male ref vs. the female, he was arguing over a single backcourt call, whereas he took issue with how the female ref was handling things in general for two straight games. I believe that was the key reason Adidas stated they acted on it: it was a recurring and ongoing situation.
Notice how the media doesn’t care to spotlight that “poor, shaken” substitute male ref LaVar refused to cooperate with. He was seen saying all kinds of crap to him.
An example of what’s happening here was demonstrated before when Chris Paul said “maybe this isn’t for her” a few seasons ago in regards to a female ref. Media blew up on that. She was tossing libelous techs up to that point — he could’ve said the same thing if she was a male, and NO ONE would make an article out of it. Like I said before, a lot of players get at male refs. In your point, if someone wasn’t having it with Kenny Mauer in one game, and got ejected by Tony Brothers in the next game, it doesn’t mean the player is retroactively wrong about Mauer
You have just pinpointed the definition of sexism. From Merriam Webster:
sexism
1
: prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially : discrimination against women
2
: behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex
Come on bro, Leahy was clearly putting on an act. She was trying to set up Lavar with her questions, which was why he was ignoring her. Furthermore, this article was really biased against Lavar, sure he wanted to get the ref out, but just because she’s a girl doesn’t mean he’s sexist. Come on bro, and weartesters is supposed to be “unbiased”.
I did not read a single opinion within the article. Unless you want to take the “in shape” joke as an opinion rather than poking some fun. Can you point out where we were biased against anyone?
I must call a spade a spade. His remarks were hateful, and they were most certainly misogynistic. I have copied and pasted the definitions of sexism and misogyny from Merriam Webster for you to reference.
Definition of sexism
1
: prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially : discrimination against women
2
: behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex
Definition of misogyny
: a hatred of women
I side with Lavar on this – him and his team are the show – the refs should have some common sense and let there be some back and forth – nobody is there to see the refs. As well, most of this Lavar is sexist stuff seems overblown – he is an aggressive guy and I am sure he has similar run-ins with males but they don’t have a gender card to play to blow it up into something more. The interaction with Christine on the fox radio show was just Lavar being closed off to her because she was constantly putting him down – she escalated the situation as many times as she could and then acted like a victim of some sort of attack – it was sad and a mix of man bashing with some racist undertones.
But here is the problem – “the show”, as you state, is NOT the team. The show is whatever Lavar says it is, and that is a problem. He trains his team to whine, to cry, to play up contact, and to reach, slap, and grab on offense – and I know most teams at this level do the same – but don’t cry when you get caught. Lavar gets defensive and angry when attwntio. Is thrown his way of a negative kind. Well, he wanted attention. Now he has to take it, good or bad.
I don’t know the backstory of the ref, but I do know she does D1 women’s games, so she knows what she is reffing. If she gave him a tech, then she should have NEVER been doing the second game. But for him to pull his team off the floor when a replacement ref was call f the game is the sign of a spoiled, immature person who wants to blame the system, not change the system.
I hope he gets permanent laryngitis and we never hear from him again.