LaVar Ball is not a big fan of Jerry Colangelo, father of Philadelphia 76ers president of basketball operations Bryan Colangelo.
In an interview with 97.5 The Fanatic in Philadelpha, Ball laid into the elder Colangelo, calling him, “a helicopter parent,” who’s “messing up” the Sixers, among other things.
“He’s worried about everything on the outside instead of getting the players,” Ball said. “He’s worried about the parents and all that, the people they’re around. You need to worry about what type of players you get for their system.”
Last year, the Sixers brought in Colangelo as a consultant last year. Then his son Bryan was hired as a replacement to The Process godfather, Sam Hinkie. Because of how that all unfolded Ball his hardly the first person to be critical of Colangelo.
However, there’s another reason that might have a lot more to do with Ball’s comments than that. Jerry Colangelo has been critical of Ball’s parenting style in the past, which Ball mentioned himself.
“He said, ‘I don’t like the people around Lonzo,’” Ball said. “That’s the one where I’m just like, OK, what have you done? All you did was for the USA team, and now you’re son is running a business there and you a so-called consultant. You a helicopter parent, over there trying to tell your son what to do.”
Now, it’s kind of hilarious that Ball is in any way being critical of another parent. The irony is as thick as molasses in February. Many have been critical of Ball’s own parenting style, including the likes of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Maybe Ball is just mad because the Sixers weren’t interested in Lonzo Ball, who ended up landing where he wanted to be in the first place with the No. 2 overall pick. Whatever this stems from, we can just chalk it up to LaVar Ball being LaVar Ball — the biggest loudmouth in sports right now.