LaMelo Ball to enter NBA Draft
Few players have had their future speculated on or discussed as much as LaMelo Ball, the youngest of LaVar Ball’s famous sons. Afterall, the family does have their own Facebook Watch reality show Ball in the Family, featuring LaMelo as well as his star brothers.
LaMelo’s oldest brother was drafted second overall in the 2017 NBA Draft by the Los Angeles Lakers and is a current member of the New Orleans Pelicans, while his other older brother LiAngelo is currently playing professionally with the Oklahoma City Blue in the NBA G League but was never drafted. That certainly won’t be the case with the LaMelo though, as many scouts have him projected to go first overall when he decided the time was right to declare.
According to The Athletic’s Shams Charania in a report released Tuesday evening, that time is now. The report suggests that Ball was under the “professional” category of early-entry candidates that was provided to all teams on Tuesday, with the virtual pre-draft process now fully underway.
LaMelo opted for the non-traditional route to the NBA, electing to forego his college eligibility and play professionally abroad instead. In 2018, the guard became the youngest American to ever sign a professional basketball contract when he joined Prienai of the Lithuanian Basketball League with his brother LiAngelo. LaMelo was just 16 at the time.
He then moved on to the Los Angeles Ballers of the Junior Basketball Association – a professional basketball league created by his father that was intended to be an alternate to the NCAA. However, the league didn’t last very long and Ball eventually ended up in the Australian-based National Basketball League with the Illawarra Hawks.
It appears it is now time for the 18-year-old who has become the talk of the basketball world to come home and truly make a mark on the game in the United States. While his brother Lonzo has featured in 155 NBA games since being drafted, he has hardly lived up to the hype averaging just 10.9 points, 6.6 assists and 6.2 rebounds a game. Not exactly the kind of stat line that teams dream of when selecting a player with the second overall pick of an NBA draft.
LaMelo has always been dubbed the most talented of the brothers though and already has a plethora of experience playing professionally against grown men. The youngest Ball brother put up decent numbers for a teenager, by averaging 17 points, 7.6 rebounds and 6.9 assists in his lone season with the Illawarra Hawks.
The 2020 NBA Draft is currently still scheduled to take place on June 25th, but that will likely change sometime with the league still yet to resume play due to COVID-19 pandemic. There has already been speculation that it could be pushed back later in the summer with August being looked at as a possibility. Regardless of when the draft does take place, expect it to happen virtually much like we saw with the 2020 NFL Draft recently.
