During an interview on ESPN Radio in Los Angeles, LaVar Ball gave a typically manic number of quotes to his hosts. While talking with Keyshawn Johnson, Jorge Sedano, and LZ Granderson, Ball let loose, and during a particularly heated moment, he said he sent ESPN's Jeff Goodman home early from Lithuania after Goodman quoted him as saying that Luke Walton had lost the team, The Big Lead reports.
Ball told the ESPN Radio hosts that he'd cut both Goodman and his ESPN colleague Ramona Shelburne's access off. "I sent Jeff Goodman home early," Ball said. "Otherwise he would have still been out here. But how are you going to be out here if I won't interview with you no more? You got to come home." When asked about whether him and Goodman were still close, as host Jorge Sedano had assumed, Ball added, "He ain't my guy no more."
At this point in the interview, Ball doubled down on what he said earlier and suggested he doesn't plan on speaking with Goodman ever again. "I'll never ever ever do an interview with that guy again," Ball said. "He's sheisty, and I see that. He wanted to go that route. I told him, 'You can do what you want, say what you want, you just gotta suffer the consequences whether they be good or bad.' He did the story he wanted to write, tried to finagle things. Guess what? He's out of the picture now. He can't come close to my family."
As for what exactly Goodman did, Ball explained, "He knows the kind of tricks he was trying to play, like when we're interviewing about the boys and all of a sudden he slips in, 'How's Lonzo doing?' Okay, I thought we were talking about the boys, because you know me, I'll answer anything."
In a statement released to The Big Lead, ESPN confirmed Goodman did, in fact, come back to the U.S. after covering the Balls in Lithuania for about a week. But the company said it didn't have anything to do with Ball asking him to leave.
"Jeff was in Lithuania for eight days and he came home as scheduled after the brothers’ first game," the statement said. "This was solely ESPN’s decision."
To hear Ball go off on Goodman, listen to a snippet of the interview in question here.
