LaMelo Ball Defends Stance About Skipping College To Play Professional Basketball

Charlotte Hornets star LaMelo Ball has been under fire recently for his comments about going to school and has since had to clarify his stance on the situation.

GQ Sports’ Tyler R. Tynes had put out a feature piece on last season’s NBA Rookie of the Year, describing his road to the top of the Hornets’ pecking order and how his infectious personality has taken a hold of the entire team.

In the piece, Tynes highlighted the Ball brothers’ road to the NBA and, specifically, LaMelo’s decision to skip college and play elsewhere.

“Then Lonzo struggled as the No. 2 pick with the Lakers, LaVar retreated from the spotlight, and 16-year-old LaMelo decided to leave high school and skip college for professional basketball in Lithuania, where LiAngelo joined him, and then Australia,” wrote Tynes.

“Naturally, he has no regrets: 'You wanna go to the league, so school's not your priority.' He thinks the NCAA has to change and there should be more options for kids to make money before they get to the NBA (the Supreme Court opened a pathway toward that in a landmark ruling shortly after our interview). 'We not trippin' off school. We not dumb. We know how to learn. We don't need school. And school not even teachin' you [expletive]—what the [expletive] is school?'”

Social media had a field day about his school comments, and it came to the point that the youngest of the three Ball brothers had to clarify his statement in the piece.

“Let me rephrase, school not for everybody,” Ball posted on his Instagram story. “Now, if you wanna be a doctor, betta take that [expletive] to school. So please, don’t be going to ya mommas talkin’ ‘bout some [I don’t] wanna do school ‘Melo said [you] don’t need it” when [you’re] not like that and not all the way invested in ya Plan A, which in my case was the league.”

Understandably, Ball’s comments about not going to school could be misquoted by the youth who have been inspired by his continuing rise to stardom.

Making it into the NBA takes a ton of effort, talent, and a bit of luck to reach the highest level of basketball in the world.

For context, NCAA Division I players have a one in 365 chance of entering the league via the draft, but if a cager is coming out of high school, that plummets to one in 3,249.

Case in point, if John Wall had not attended that one camp when he was around 15 years old and garnered national attention for his level of play, who knows whether Kentucky would have taken a chance on him and worse, who knows whether he would have made it into the NBA.

As Ball continues to grow into stardom, he’ll have to be more careful with his words, especially when it comes to something so important as education.