Speak It Into Being

No, lavar ball will not stop talking. Not until it gets him and his family everything they want, starting with oldest son Lonzo in a Lakers uniform.

- Ramona Shelburne

IT’S BEEN, WHAT, SIX MONTHS SINCE THE WORLD MET LAVAR BALL AND HIS BROOD OF BIG BALLERS?

And already most basketball fans would recognize their big house in this upscale tract-housing community about 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles. There’s the double-rimmed basketball hoops rising from the solid white concrete fence in the backyard. The fake grass out front (you try keeping the real stuff going once it gets hot in the summer). The collection of luxury cars that LaVar bought for his three sons so they wouldn’t be swayed when someone else tried to impress them with wheels. And, of course, the black garage door.

“You see all these houses?” LaVar asks as we pull up to the house where he’s raised and trained three basketball-playing sons who all have a chance to play in the NBA. “You only see one all-white one. That’s because it’s my s---.”

The homeowners association told him he couldn’t paint the house white. And that is not something you say to a Big Baller. So LaVar dug in, told them, “You crazy; this one is going to be white!” And just to show them who was really in charge, he put in a black garage door too.

“You ain’t supposed to have that s---,” he says. “But you know who the homeowners association guy is now, the president?” Go ahead. Guess. “That’s f---ing me! Now you gotta come to me to get your house painted!”