Busy Lonzo Ball prepares for first training camp as new face of Lakers

By the time Lonzo Ball begins his first training camp with the Lakers on Sept. 24 he will have already released several versions of his signature shoe, starred in a reality show chronicling the daily lives of his family and dropped a rap single.

It has been, by any measure, a busy summer for the No. 2 pick in the NBA draft and the NBA Summer League MVP.

“I look at it pretty simply,” Ball said Monday in an interview with the Southern California News Group. “Basketball is my passion, my job. The music thing is just a hobby so that’s fun, and then the show I’m just with my family. So it’s nothing out of the ordinary I don’t usually do.”

The Ball family, led by patriarch cum pitchman LaVar, has managed to stay at the forefront of the NBA’s crowded landscape throughout the offseason. “Ball In the Family” debuted on Facebook’s Watch platform on Aug. 31. As of Monday, the first episode had been viewed more than 8.4 million times.

The show has wrapped filming for its first season and three of 10 episodes have aired, although the subsequent two episodes have failed to generate the same interest as the premiere. Neither is yet to crack a million views on Facebook. Bunim/Murray Productions, the company behind the show, also produced “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” and “The Real World.” There has been no announcement yet about a possible second season of the Ball program.

“Ball is Life” has so far chronicled the end of Lonzo’s college career at UCLA, the draft and his interactions with his two basketball-playing brothers, LiAngelo and LaMelo. It has also taken viewers into the family’s Chino Hills home after Tina Ball, Lonzo’s mother, suffered a stroke in March and her subsequent recovery.

“I think it’s kind of cool,” Lonzo said, of living in a TV show. “At first it’s kind of weird with the cameras following you everywhere, but once we got used to it. The crew and everybody, we all became friends and it became pretty easy after that.”

It’s not new for a Lakers player to have a reality television presence, after Lamar Odom shared airtime with then-wife Khloe Kardashian during his Lakers tenure. Ball said he has not solicited any advice on balancing the two worlds from Odom, who has periodically visited the Lakers’ training facility this summer.

In fact, Ball said he isn’t sure how his foray into unscripted entertainment is playing among those affiliated with the Lakers.

He doesn’t know if Coach Luke Walton has watched. His teammates haven’t had much to say either, he said.

Advertisement

LaVar Ball stressed that the Lakers had no input on the show’s production.

“Don’t nobody give me any parameters about nothing,” he said. “I’m my own person. Nobody be like, ‘LaVar, you can’t do this, you should do this.’ I don’t go with that. I’m good just how I am and nobody can tell me nothing because they’re not my boss.”

He added: “They (the Lakers) ain’t going to have no requests, it’s my show. It’s ‘Ball in the Family, it ain’t ‘The Lakers in the Family.’’

Television isn’t the only side of show business the family is exploring. Last week, Lonzo Ball released his debut rap single, “Melo Ball 1,” a 99-cent download that provides an affordable alternative to his signature Big Baller Brand sneakers, which run $495.

Primarily, however, Ball has been busy joining the rest of the Lakers roster in near-daily workouts at the team’s new practice facility in El Segundo.

“Since we have such a young team, we pretty much have everybody in there already, everybody knows each other,” he said. “We’re looking forward to training camp and getting after it, then suiting up for that first preseason game.”

The Lakers, who won 26 games last season, will open the preseason with Lonzo Ball at point guard on Sept. 30 against Minnesota in Anaheim, fulfilling LaVar Ball’s lifelong guarantee that his oldest son would play for the Lakers.

“He’s been saying that my whole life,” Lonzo said. “I started playing at six and he’s definitely been saying that since I remember.”