LaVar Ball’s dreams of becoming a sports mogul now include starting his own league for high school graduates, according to a recent ESPN report.
ESPN reported the following:
Ball said his Junior Basketball Association — which he said is fully funded by his Big Baller Brand — plans to pay the lowest-ranked player a salary of $3,000 a month and the best player $10,000 a month. Ball is looking for 80 players to fill 10 teams that will seek to play at NBA arenas in Los Angeles, Dallas, Brooklyn and Atlanta.
“Getting these players is going to be easy,” Ball told ESPN. “This is giving guys a chance to get a jump start on their career, to be seen by pro scouts, and we’re going to pay them because someone has to pay these kids.”
This is actually a really interesting idea, except that it’s kind of already a thing. Players only have to be 18 to play in the NBA’s minor league system, which is the G-League. However, Ball is planning on paying players in his league a lot more than they’d make in the G-League. Salaries in the G-League cap out at $26,000. That’s not a lot of money at all.
The major problem for Ball is getting the infrastructure in place for something like this to work. You can’t exactly just throw a bunch of kids together, and expect it to work flawlessly. Unlike many of the things Ball says and does, I actually find this very interesting. I think there are a lot of players who would rather make a little bit of money and not worry about class instead of going to college. This could actually be something very cool if Ball gets it to work. It’d be one small step for basketball and one gigantic step for the Big Baller Brand.
