LaVar Ball made it clear he doesn’t want to give President Trump credit for helping his son and two other UCLA basketball players in a shoplifting incident in China.
“Who?” Ball told ESPN when asked about Trump’s involvement. “What was he over there for? Don’t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out.”
Ball’s son, LiAngelo Ball, along with Cody Riley and Jalen Hill, were arrested and questioned in China on Nov. 7 on suspicion on shoplifting. They returned to Los Angeles on Tuesday evening after posting bail and addressed the media on Wednesday.
The players, who were indefinitely suspended by the team, stole from three stores, including sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store, UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero said.
“As long as my boy’s back here, I’m fine,” Ball told ESPN. “I’m happy with how things were handled. A lot of people like to say a lot of things that they thought happened over there. Like I told him, ‘They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes.’ I’m from L.A. I’ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. My son has built up enough character that one bad decision doesn’t define him. Now if you can go back and say when he was 12 years old he was shoplifting and stealing cars and going wild, then that’s a different thing.”
The three players thanked Trump, who tweeted this week about the matter, for intervening on their behalf with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
