LaVar Ball downplays Donald Trump's role in UCLA freshmen's release
2:54 AM ET
Arash MarkaziESPN Senior Writer
LOS ANGELES -- LaVar Ball downplayed his son's shoplifting incident in China as well as U.S. president Donald Trump's involvement in getting his son and two other UCLA players back to the United States earlier this week.
"Who?" Ball told ESPN when asked about Trump's involvement in the matter. "What was he over there for? Don't tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out."
UCLA freshmen LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill, who had been detained in China for the past week on suspicion of shoplifting, landed in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening and addressed the media on Wednesday before being indefinitely suspended by the team.
Trump, who returned late Tuesday from a trip through Asia, said he raised their case with President Xi Jinping of China during a visit to Beijing last week.
Multiple sources told ESPN that UCLA officials are debating how long to keep out the three suspended freshmen players who admitted to shoplifting during the basketball team's trip to China last week.
The players were questioned last week about allegedly stealing from three high-end stores, including sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store next to the team's hotel in Hangzhou, where the Bruins had been staying before leaving for Shanghai to face Georgia Tech on Friday.
They were released on bail early Nov. 8 and had been staying at a lakeside hotel in Hangzhou prior to flying home.
"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.
"Everybody gets stuck on the negativity of some things and they get stuck on them too long. That's not me. I handle what's going on and then we go from there."
2:54 AM ET
Arash MarkaziESPN Senior Writer
LOS ANGELES -- LaVar Ball downplayed his son's shoplifting incident in China as well as U.S. president Donald Trump's involvement in getting his son and two other UCLA players back to the United States earlier this week.
"Who?" Ball told ESPN when asked about Trump's involvement in the matter. "What was he over there for? Don't tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out."
UCLA freshmen LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill, who had been detained in China for the past week on suspicion of shoplifting, landed in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening and addressed the media on Wednesday before being indefinitely suspended by the team.
Trump, who returned late Tuesday from a trip through Asia, said he raised their case with President Xi Jinping of China during a visit to Beijing last week.
Multiple sources told ESPN that UCLA officials are debating how long to keep out the three suspended freshmen players who admitted to shoplifting during the basketball team's trip to China last week.
The players were questioned last week about allegedly stealing from three high-end stores, including sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store next to the team's hotel in Hangzhou, where the Bruins had been staying before leaving for Shanghai to face Georgia Tech on Friday.
They were released on bail early Nov. 8 and had been staying at a lakeside hotel in Hangzhou prior to flying home.
"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.
"Everybody gets stuck on the negativity of some things and they get stuck on them too long. That's not me. I handle what's going on and then we go from there."
laughing stock of USA
