Plaschke: Los Angeles Lakers Threatened LaVar Ball To Keep Him Quiet

The Los Angeles Lakers inherited quite the headache when the team drafted Lonzo Ball with the second overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft.

LaVar Ball had no filter throughout the early portion of the 2017-18 season and the Lakers definitely weren’t a huge fan of his antics. In a recent appearance on “The Dan Patrick Show,” Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke stated that he believes that the Lakers organization threatened to trade Lonzo Ball if LaVar Ball didn’t keep quiet.

Plaschke also added that he believes that this tactic worked because Ball has been fairly quiet. The veteran columnist also added that he thinks that the presence of LeBron James has kept Ball quiet because he doesn’t want to anger James.

It’s safe to say that LaVar Ball hasn’t had a problem staying in the public eye over the last calendar year. Ball criticized head coach Luke Walton last November for the way he was using his son and even said that Walton was making Lonzo Ball look “soft.” This comes after Magic Johnson “admonished” Walton for his offensive approach so far this season.

LaVar Ball hasn’t been very opinionated over the last several months after he’s been occupied with his JBA basketball league for players that don’t play college basketball. However, Ball did come out earlier this week and say that he could coach this Lakers roster much better than Walton. He criticized Walton for pulling Lonzo Ball and James in the later portions of games and believed that one of each should be on the floor more often that not.