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Ball in the Family: The Making of a Leader

Episode Five of Ball in the Family Shows Melo's Flaws and Gelo's Quietness

By Stone StrankmanPublished 7 years ago 4 min read
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In episode five, "The Making of a Leader," of Ball in the Family, we get to see how LaMelo is still just a high school kid that loves to play NBA 2K. LiAngelo has been at UCLA for a period of time now and doesn't get to spend as much time with his family, and has no idea how to hold a conversation with his girlfriend. Lonzo doesn't have any air time this week, while LaVar and Tina get just the right amount of screenplay.

LiAngelo is back to visit his family and girlfriend from Westwood and goes out to dinner with his girlfriend, Izzy. They order steak and Gelo wants ranch with his steak. Who eats steak with ranch? The restaurant doesn't have ranch, or even barbecue sauce, so Gelo settles for the original sauce that the place offers for steak. He pouts a little bit about not having ranch while Izzy tries to further the conversation. She asks him if it's weird not being at home anymore and if he misses his family. Gelo says that he doesn't miss his family because that would make him "soft." He doesn't seem to be the greatest of communicators, so let's hope that he's a much better basketball player than a conversation pleaser.

LaVar is a special person as always in episode five, and has a couple of different sides of him shown. He's the coach of LaMelo's AAU team and is louder than ever and is extremely vocal towards the refs in his game. As usual, he has the most confidence that I have ever seen in a person and says that no one in that tournament can put up "50 and 50" points in each half to score over 100 points in a single game. In the first game LaMelo plays well and the team does score over 100 points. It was the first basketball game of any of the three children's for their mom, Tina, to attend after her stroke.

After the game Melo went to Taco Bell with a few friends and once they got to the window, the cashier said that if he had known it was LaMelo that he would've given him free food. In response, Melo asked for a chicken quesadilla and of course got it for free. Imagine being an incredibly well-known basketball player at the age of 15 and being able to get free Taco Bell. Not that Taco Bell is expensive, but my senior year in high school during the last two weeks of school I managed to get Taco Bell 12 times during those 14 days. 12 trips to Taco Bell adds up and getting it for free would've been a blessing. When Melo gets home, he starts to play NBA 2K. Once you start playing 2K at night, it is terribly hard to stop playing all through the night. LaVar had just preached to the team post game to go home and get a good nights rest, but Melo insists on playing 2K until 2:30 in the morning when they have an 11 AM tipoff.

Melo gets to the court and is sleeping on his backpack. During the game their team is getting throttled, Melo is missing shots, and gets denied by the rim on a dunk and falls down. The most embarrassing thing in basketball is to get rejected by the rim on a dunk. Carmelo Anthony did it last year. Dwyane Wade has done it, among others, but as a fifteen-year-old phenom of a celebrity basketball player and to do it at an AAU game that now millions of people can watch on Facebook? No siree, count me out.

LaVar chews out Melo after the game in his post game speech and how they needed to play better. He says that Melo isn't ready to be a leader yet and chucks a basketball at him in frustration. As a swimmer, when coaches got mad, they typically threw kick boards or pull buoys at swimmers in frustration, but I did have a coach throw an entire giant orange cone at me during a morning practice. Let me tell you, that did not feel great. When a coach throws something at you during a practice, or post game, you know that you messed up bad and it's one of the worst feelings in the world.

Melo is only 15 years old during this AAU game so he has plenty of time to learn how to act on and off the court, but if he's going to be on the Lakers with Lonzo in four years, he's going to have to figure it out soon.

basketball
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About the Creator

Stone Strankman

I'm in a committed relationship with the NBA. Staff Writer, The Unbalanced.

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