A reluctant LiAngelo Ball said that he wouldn’t have thanked President Trump if his school hadn’t instructed him to do so.
The former University of California, Los Angeles, basketball player said that school officials told him to thank the president in his statement to the press after being released from a Chinese prison following an arrest for shoplifting.
“My school wanted to hear it,” he told the New York radio show. “If they didn’t tell me to do it, it wouldn’t have been in there, to be honest.”
He added: “Before I went up there, it was like, ‘You’ve got to thank him.’ I just threw him in there real quick right before I gave my speech.”
The players were arrested one day before Trump visited China last month.
After their release, he tweeted, “Do you think the three UCLA Basketball Players will say thank you President Trump? They were headed for 10 years in jail!”
Do you think the three UCLA Basketball Players will say thank you President Trump? They were headed for 10 years in jail!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2017
Afterwards, during a press conference, Ball and the other two players apologized and thanked Trump.
The story didn’t end there. Ball’s father, LaVar Ball, declined to give Trump credit, invoking the president’s ire, and remarked that he would have thanked Trump if he brought his son home from China on Air Force One.
“I would have said thank you if he would have put them on his plane and taken them home. Then I would have said, ‘Thank you, Mr. Trump, for taking my boys out of China and bringing them back to the U.S.’ There’s a lot of room on that plane. I would have said thank you kindly for that,” he said in an interview.
UCLA suspended Ball and the other two players after the incident. Ball took it a step further by pulling his son out of the university.
