Will LiAngelo Ball ever play in the NBA? After declaring for the NBA Draft in late March, the middle child of the Ball trio will test his luck in finding a roster in 2018.
LiAngelo's last year
If you are not aware of what has happened to LiAngelo Ball in this past year, then, first of all, please come out from whatever rock you are living under, and second, here is a recap of his past several months.
LiAngelo Ball hasn't exactly had the year that I'm sure he, or anyone else, was expecting. The shooting guard went to play college basketball with the UCLA Bruins after committing in his sophomore year of high school in Chino Hills.
As a three-star recruit, despite a great high school career, Ball was set to make his debut with UCLA in Shanghai, China.
A shoplifting incident put LiAngelo and a couple other UCLA players behind bars until they were released and flown back to America in part due to the efforts of President Donald Trump. The incident indefinitely suspended Ball from the basketball team.
His father and outspoken businessman, LaVar Ball, then pulled his middle child from the UCLA program.
In December, LiAngelo, with his brother LaMelo Ball, with the help of their father, signed a contract to play professional basketball overseas in Lithuania with Vytautas Prienu.
LiAngelo and Lithuania
Ball has not had the most spectacular career in Lithuania.
Through the regular season, LiAngelo averaged 14.55 points, 3.18 rebounds, 0.91 assists, and 0.73 steals per game in 24.8 minutes per game, so not a great sample size for the California-native shooting guard. He shows the potential of being a scoring threat, but is rather one-dimensional with a lack of involvement in any other statistic.
Through Ball's 11 games in Lithuania, Vytautas Prienu went a whopping 1-10, so to say LiAngelo's track record in Lithuania to this point is an underwhelming one would be an understatement. Yes, LiAngelo Ball is playing professional basketball at 19 and still has time to grow as a player, but the level of competition is much greater in the NBA.
If he struggles in Lithuania, then there's no telling how he will do playing professionally in America.
His most recent moment that garnered a lot of media attention was his 72-point game in an exhibition against the Guangdong Southern Tigers youth team on the day he declared for the draft. It isn't terribly noteworthy since it was a youth team, but it did make a lot of headlines through news outlets, which may grab the attention of some NBA teams.
Will LiAngelo get drafted?
Yes. Why is that? Well, thank you for asking.
The short answer is name value.
As much as a team wants to win, they also want to fill the seats, and, while Gelo may not be the highly touted prospect a team wants, he can still add some sort of value to a roster and help attract fans to games.
His name value also gives the team more media exposure.
The best comparison to Ball that I see in sports is Tim Tebow and the New York Mets. Sure, Tebow may actually turn out to be a decent outfielder in the league, but a lot of what fueled the decision was his name value. He was going to help sell tickets and give the team more media exposure.
Ball has the potential to find success in the NBA under the right system, but if he did not have the name value that he does, then I don't think he'd get drafted. While it isn't likely that LiAngelo will be a Laker in 2018 like LaVar Ball would hope, I would say he has a good chance of ending up on a roster.
