Now Lonzo Ball Has John Wall To Deal With

We’ve already seen the impact of LaVar Ball’s tryhard dad-bluster in the way his son was treated on the court by Patrick Beverley, but it seemed unfair to draw too big an inference from that. That’s because Patrick Beverley is, if you want to be nice about it, a particularly feisty brand of point guard. Surely, the other guards in the league will be more charitable/less maniacal when matched up against Lonzo Ball, right?

Perhaps not. The Lakers take on the Washington Wizards tonight, and it’s an anticipated game because LaVar once again hopped on TV to yap about how the Wizards need to “beware” because Lonzo won’t allow his team to lose twice in one week. This got Wizards center Marcin Gortat’s dander up:

And today brings confirmation that Wall is equally eager to try and shut LaVar up, telling the that he will show Lonzo “no mercy.” He went on:

“His dad has gone on top of all that,” Wall said. “Forget what the media is saying. ‘This is what my son is.’ Which, I’m not knocking him. He’s hyping his son up but he’s already getting all that hype. … He’s just taking it to another level.

“We didn’t say nothing about him, nothing to him, and he says, ‘The Wizards better be ready because he don’t ever lose two in a row,’” Wall continued, then scoffed at the absurdity of the father’s boast. “Like, this is the league now. It’s a different ballgame.”

I’m genuinely intrigued to see how long Lonzo is going to have to deal with every opposing point guard coming for his neck. The odds of LaVar shutting up are long, and if there’s one thing we know about NBA players it’s that they are both petty and hyper-competitive. Lonzo doesn’t necessarily deserve 82 games of torture, but I will be neither sad nor surprised if John Wall does this tonight:

[ WaPo]