After All That Nonsense, LaMelo Ball Is Going Back To High School

LaMelo Ball, youngest brother of Lakers guard Lonzo Ball and youngest son of fartbrained wannabe shoe salesman LaVar Ball, will enroll at an Ohio prep school to finish his high-school basketball career, according to Slam Online. It’s not known at this time exactly how this move fits into his overbearing nightmare dad’s sweaty lifelong quest to trade his children’s dignity and prospects for as much glazed F-grade half-attention as he can squeeze for himself out of the cross-section of deranged teens who post NBA2K dribble-god videos on YouTube, but you can be sure LaVar will insist that it does, somehow, to anyone who will listen.

It’s been quite a stretch for LaMelo, and middle Ball brother LiAngelo, since their dad apparently took the Lakers’ selection of Lonzo with the second overall pick in the 2017 NBA draft as certification of all his worst, most reckless impulses toward megalomaniacal sports-dad flailing. From being yanked out of their respective schools—Chino Hills High for LaMelo, UCLA for LiAngelo—to go play on a shitty Lithuanian pro team, to generally sucking ass on that shitty Lithuanian team (LaMelo couldn’t even get steady playing time there), to their dad yanking their shitty Lithuanian team out of its league to participate in exhibitions for his shitty, dumb, TJ Maxx–ass shoe brand, to their dad abruptly yanking them off the shitty Lithuanian team, to their dad attempting to press them into service for his deeply half-assed and predictably deadbeat barnstorming semipro boys’ league, they are having an extremely normal one.

Anyway, LaMelo is back in high school, more or less. The place he’s enrolling, Spire Institute, sure seems like it’s primarily a moneymaking concern that exchanges diplomas for sports service, so probably there will not be a lot of trigonometry involved in any event. Who knows what’s next; it’s unclear whether LaMelo wants to, or would even be eligible to, participate in the NBA’s and NCAA’s one-and-done scam now that his participation in his dad’s competing scams has required him to serve, at least nominally, as a professional basketball player. Whatever it is, I’m sure it will be stupid and vaguely sad!