It’s official: LaMelo and LiAngelo Ball are going pro.
The Ball brothers have agreed to a one-year deal with Lithuanian team Vytautas Prienai, according to The Vertical’s Shams Charania. They will report to the team in early January.
Vytautas won the championship last year and apparently offered the kind of flexibility and promise of minutes the Balls were looking for.
The younger Ball brothers going pro in Europe is not what was expected to happen this season, but it’s not entirely surprising. LiAngelo was set to be a freshman at UCLA this season, but a shoplifting arrest while the team was in China before their season debut resulted in an indefinite suspension. His father LaVar pulled him from UCLA last week.
LaMelo was supposed to be a junior this season at Chino Hills High School, but his father pulled him out of school in October with the intent of home schooling him. Though LaMelo was committed to UCLA, LaVar did not seem concerned about preserving his youngest son’s amateur status anyhow, which made it potentially unlikely for him to eventually have a college career.
With this latest development, all three Ball brothers will now be professional basketball players.
