LaVar Ball: Lakers ‘don’t want to play for’ Luke Walton
LaVar Ball believes Los Angeles Lakers coach Luke Walton has lost the team.
Ball, watching Saturday’s Lakers game from Lithuania, felt that the Lakers are not playing for Walton based on what he was seeing.
“You can see they’re not playing for Luke no more,” Ball told ESPN’s Jeff Goodman. “Luke doesn’t have control of the team no more. They don’t want to play for him.”
“That’s a good team. Nobody wants to play for him. I can see it. No high-fives when they come out of the game. People don’t know why they’re in the game. He’s too young. He’s too young. … He ain’t connecting with them anymore. You can look at every player, he’s not connecting with not one player.”
Ball noted that his son Lonzo didn’t seem happy with his usage.
“Lonzo looked good, but he also looked disgusted,” Ball said. “He was ready to play. Four minutes left in the first quarter, he dunked it, getting in a flow and Coach sits him down. Sat him down. Now game goes from four points to 10 to 15 to 20. I don’t know what they’re doing. If he’s ready to play, let him play. Don’t try and monitor no minutes, put on restrictions.”
The Lakers had tried to get Ball to stop voicing concerns like this in public. He obviously hasn’t, and now Walton is going to have to answer questions about his handle on his team, fairly or not.
