…because he doesn’t like the basketball coach. The son is happy because he no longer has ‘book work’ and can concentrate on basketball. :smack:
LaVar home-schooling LaMelo; ‘no distractions’ LaVar Ball -- Homeschooling LaMelo; 'no distractions'
via @ESPN App http://es.pn/app
His goal is to be a professional basketball player. The state requires minors to meet certain academic standards, as long as those are met the state won’t care and neither do I. No different than any other home-schooling IMO, kids get home-schooled to be actors or dancers or other sports. LaVar is a loud-mouth but it’s working for him. So far.
Why do I have a feeling that kid has a bright future dropping fries at McDonald’s?
Because you don’t understand NBA basketball and have a condescending attitude toward people who work at McDonalds?
Only 3 out of 10,000 high school basketball players go pro.
[quote]
[ul]Players that make the jump from high school to college: 2.9%
[li]Players that make the jump from college to pro: 1.3%[/li][li]Players that make the jump from high school to pro: .03%[/ul][/li][/quote]
He’s got a better chance (still not much) than most kids in the same situation.
One brother second overall draft pick, one at UCLA(with a number of All-[team]selections in high school.
He’s got a reasonable chance at the genetic lottery.
What happened to: ’ A Brain is a terrible thing to waste’?
Basketball isn’t a career that 99.99% of people can aspire too. Acting kids have onset tutors and limitations to their hours. Wouldnt it have been smarter to pull the kid off the basketball team and keep him in school?
This kid is in the .01% though. If it were my decision I would keep my kid in school and on the basketball team. Learning to deal with people that won’t kiss your ass or don’t even like you is very good skill to learn.
In this particular case LaMelo has one brother that is already a number 2 overall NBA draft pick, another brother that was All-American in high school and recruited to a basketball school in UCLA. From the hype I’ve read Melo is better than LiAngelo and not appreciably worse than Lonzo, it’s doubtful (but possible) that he’ll not be a first round pick. If Lonzo balls out Melo and LiAngelo probably both get picked in the lottery of their respective drafts.
I’ve worked in the food service profession, so I speak with authority when I say that it’s not a great place to have a long-term career. Unless you’re able to work your way through management, but going far in that direction will require both leadership abilities and business skills which you’d acquire more easily with proper schooling.
Regardless, I understand basketball enough that I know if you have one bad injury you’re out. Even the most talented individual should know something other than basketball. If the argument here was that the school wasn’t providing a good education then I can see hiring tutors but come on, they’ve made it clear that he’s going to do just the minimum legally required and otherwise fully bank on basketball.
I’ve also been home-schooled before (when the school I attended overseas was behind US schools and setting me back) so I know some of the potential benefits but that’s clearly not the focus here.
I’m also not going to pretend the average student athlete is getting a quality education but rarely do I see something this blatant.
As soon as I saw the headline, my first thought is when is the reality show coming?
It’s already out. They have a show on Facebook.
Hey look, we elected an egomaniac fabulist who put his kids on the White House payroll. So, that’s what America is into, yah?
While I find daddy Ball to be a knucklehead of the highest order, it is not in dispute that his kids are at the top end of talent for the sport of basketball. There be crazy sports parents all over, he is just more public about it. So, for me, let them do their thing.
My only complaint is that I live in L.A. and would prefer this wasn’t all happening with my local teams. I would rather this whole circus be something I could admire from afar.
Dad’s making headlines for not paying lip service to a system that cares not one whit for athletes’ educations or their lives after they’re done playing [sports]ball.
He’s not the problem - the system is.
No, he is the problem. Taking your son out of high school to concentrate on an uncertain professional basketball career is pretty dumb.
His loudmouthed bragging is going to make Lonzos pro career a whole lot harder than it had to be. The bragging, the attention whoring won’t go forgotten by vets who go up against him. Lindo isn’t Michael or Magic. He has accomplished basically nothing in the game thus far.
The apex of LaVars bb career was to be a bench player at Washington St. Yet he brags that he can beat MJ one on one. Yes, he is drawing lots of publicity. But at some point you have to deliver on the court.
I agree! But he will be rewarded for it, if I’m understanding his level of talent based on this thread. The dad is operating within the realities of the system.
If the system cared about education as much as it pretends to, the opportunity cost for pulling a kid out of school would be too high. Getting pulled out of school to get what will almost certainly be a bare minimum education or even an online diploma not worth the virtual paper it’s printed on should result in no decent college wanting him. But he’ll get recruited by a very good school, and when he’s in college he’ll probably take courses that exist almost exclusively for student athletes who don’t care much about ‘book work.’
If the biggest disservice that dad is doing ends up being “the vets will remember his hubris when he’s a pro making a league minimum of eight hundred grand of a year,” well, we should all suffer so mightily. 
This is probably the most literal and apropos application of “don’t hate the playah, hate the game” I’ve ever seen. 
LaMelo Ball already has a scholarship offer from, and has committed to, UCLA. If he is anywhere near as good as his older brother–and he almost certainly is, since ESPN ranked him the seventh best high school sophomore in the country–he will attend UCLA for one year before moving on to fame and fortune in the NBA.
I know that on some dim level I’m supposed to be disgusted at the destruction of our standards and the incredible pettiness of a sports parent, and all I can think is: “Lucky bastard.”
See, here’s the thing…except for the top dogs on the very top of the heat, or the blessed few who obtained immunity somehow, high school is a neverending Hell on earth, combining the deranged anarchy of the lower school levels with dedicated slimeballs with years of experience, are very well-organized, and can also run a lot faster than younger kids. It is a paradise for jerks, crowns, and gutter trash and a hideous nightmare for anyone deemed a target (which I was after about the first goddam month). And learning? To this day I can’t name one practical skill or scrap of knowledge I retained from that flaming cesspool. Earlier grades, yeah, I got the basic stuff like what commas are for and 5+8 and where to cross the street. Everything relevant to every job I ever had, college. High school was pretty much a 4 year stream of BS and excuses and torment and dystopia.
Of course, the big problem with basketball as a career is that it’s such an all-or-nothing proposition. Nearly all career paths have steps and levels; the State of Hawaii has positions with as many as seven. Even baseball has three levels of minor leagues. For basketball, it doesn’t matter how big a standout he is in college; either he gets an NBA contract or he’s hosed. So putting everything on it is a big, big gamble. Is it a good one? ESPN’s commenters seem to think so. We’ll find out soon enough.
Not really, a lot of college stars who fail in the NBA or go undrafted wind up in foreign leagues. The pay isn’t as high as the NBA’s, but it’s not shabby either.
Average salary for foreigners in the Chinese Basketball Association is $500,000. Iraq’s Superleague somehow pays $20,000/month. Then there’s the Turkish league, the EuroLeague, and so forth.