25 Jan
LaMelo Ball Rumors
The NBL has profited from LaMelo’s talent, securing ESPN and Facebook deals to broadcast the games. Brittany Gray, the Hawks’ marketing and media manager, says that the announcement of LaMelo’s signing generated 1.6 billion impressions across the NBL’s web and social channels. Over a million viewers in the U.S. streamed LaMelo’s debut against the Brisbane Bullets on Facebook, an NBL record. For LaMelo, this is the same script, different continent. “People done made money off this kid for years,” says Jackson, who played in the NBA from 1999 to 2006. “I don’t really want to use the word, but it’s damn near like he’s a prostitute.”
“People don’t know me, know me as a person. They don’t know what I’ve been through.” The more he speaks, the words begin to tumble out as if they’ve been held in for a long time. He is acutely aware of how people view him, treat him. “People don’t look at you as a human,” he says. “People look at you as a dollar sign.”
He is still a work in progress, most glaringly on defense. His teammates have not babied him either. Once, a teammate took off for a fast break but missed the layup. He yelled at LaMelo, trailing at half court: “F–king run with me! You should have f–king been there to put it back!”
I remember watching practice every day in Lithuania, struck by how no matter how freezing it was outside, no matter how miserable he was inside, LaMelo kept a stiff upper lip. He played hard. He didn’t complain. “It was like a scary movie,” LaMelo says. “It just made me want to go home.”
People don’t see those moments. Many think LaMelo is egotistical, disrespectful. Spoiled, immature. Too loud. “I’m just misunderstood,” LaMelo says. “About everything.” That’s, of course, partially because of his father. Assumptions that people have are fed by whatever his father says or does. “It gets attached to us,” LaMelo says. “I mean, at the end of the day, that’s my dad. I know him. He knows me. That’s always going to be a bond.”
LaMelo wouldn’t call Lithuania tough, though. Tough was seeing his mother, Tina, in a wheelchair, shivering in her BBB puffer jacket, in the cold Lithuanian gym, forcing a smile for Ball in the Family cameras despite recovering from a stroke. “My mom could have possibly died,” LaMelo says. Seeing her continue to suffer guts him. So when he is with her in offseasons, he pours her water, tears open the straw. He hops in the pool, holding her hands as she completes rehabilitation exercises. He becomes the parent, she the child.
