NCAA Basketball: Top 5 former players who would’ve benefitted from new NIL rules
Lonzo Ball: UCLA
Current Instagram Follower Count: 10.1M
Current Twitter Follower Count: 1.2M
This one should be pretty obvious, a great high school, and college basketball player, with a father who pretty much had daily appearances on popular sports media shows on ESPN, Fox Sports 1, and just about everything else.
Lonzo Ball‘s father, Lavar, started the “Big Baller Brand” for his sons Lonzo, LiAngelo, and LaMelo, just after Lonzo left UCLA for the NBA. The company made signature shoes for each of the three boys while also selling shirts, hats, and every other kind of clothing.
The shoes created for LaMelo (the youngest of the three) actually made LaMelo ineligible to play college basketball due to the fact that a company was profiting off of his likeness. Now imagine if players were allowed to profit off of their name, image, and likeness while Lonzo was at school?
Lavar Ball would have started the company while Lonzo was at UCLA, and Lonzo would’ve been able to make a ton of money through a sponsorship with Big Baller Brand and the shoes created for him. He wouldn’t have been allowed to wear the shoes during games at UCLA, but they still would have sold like hotcakes, just like they did once Lonzo got to the NBA.
Ball’s merchandise would’ve sold instantly just because of how great of a marketer his father Lavar was. Like I mentioned above, it used to be impossible to turn on either ESPN or FS1 shows without seeing Lavar Ball on at least one of them talking about how great Lonzo and the other two were, and how they were all going to be great in the NBA.
Because of this, many got annoyed with Ball and his antics, and because of it started to dislike Lonzo, LiAngelo, and LaMelo, but others went the opposite way and in turn, went and bought BBB merch and thought it was awesome that Lavar was on TV talking about how great his kids were.
These people that thought it was awesome would have bought Lonzo’s merchandise had he been allowed to profit off of his name, image, and likeness, and he would’ve made an absolute killing.