Donald Trump and LaVar Ball have been engaged in a heated war of words over the course of the last few days. Ball did an interview with ESPN over the weekend and said that he didn’t think Trump had anything to do with helping his son LiAngelo escape jail time over shoplifting charges in China. Trump fired back by saying that he should have left LiAngelo in jail. And Ball did a 23-minute interview on CNN on Monday night, during which he repeatedly refused to thank Trump for bringing his son home.
With those things in mind, there were some people who were actually surprised when Trump didn’t initially respond to what Ball said on CNN. But he changed that very early Wednesday morning when he took to—yep, you guessed it—Twitter to rip Ball for his CNN comments. Trump said that he and he alone is responsible for helping LiAngelo get out of his shoplifting charges, and he went as far as to call Ball "a poor man’s version of Don King" in a pair of tweets directed at him.
"It wasn’t the White House, it wasn’t the State Department, it wasn’t father LaVar’s so-called people on the ground in China that got his son out of a long term prison sentence - IT WAS ME," Trump wrote. "Too bad! LaVar is just a poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair. Just think…LaVar you could have spent the next 5 to 10 years during Thanksgiving with your son in China, but no NBA contract to support you. But remember LaVar, shoplifting is NOT a little thing. It’s a really big deal, especially in China. Ungrateful fool!"
Additionally, Trump retweeted this tweet regarding Ball’s "ungratefulness" to him.
After going at Ball, Trump also took aim at Roger Goodell. A Washington Post report released on Tuesday suggested the NFL is thinking about keeping players in the locker room during the national anthem next season to prevent them from kneeling during it. Trump called on Goodell to “get tough and smart” on the issue of players protesting during the anthem.
"The NFL is now thinking about a new idea - keeping teams in the Locker Room during the National Anthem next season," Trump wrote. "That’s almost as bad as kneeling! When will the highly paid Commissioner finally get tough and smart? This is killing your league!"
That tweet came just two days after Trump ripped Marshawn Lynch for sitting during the national anthem prior to a game on Sunday.
How in the world do you see this Trump/LaVar thing playing out? Neither of them is going to back down from the other, and both appear to love all the attention that this is bringing them. So it seems like they could potentially keep this going for awhile. LaVar is yet to respond, but he was at the Staples Center late Tuesday night watching his son Lonzo and the Lakers play against the Bulls. So it’s probably only a matter of time before we get a response from him regarding this latest round of tweets from Trump.
