LaVar Ball downplays Trump's role in UCLA freshmen's release

LaVar's son, LiAngelo Ball was one of the three basketball players arrested in China for shoplifting and faced years in jail.

It ain't no big thing.

"Who?"

Playing stupid when asked by ESPN about Trump's involvement with his son's release.

 "What was he over there for? Don't tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out."

Daddy, it's not about you. It's about your son's sorry ass sitting in jail for years. Chinese don't make the distinction between small personal items of theft, and they don't engage the racial political world constructed around  you and where you abide.

As for not telling LaVar Bell nothing, we will tell him something whether or not he cares to hear it. What was Trump over there for? Certainly not for getting three basketball players out trouble they brought to themselves.

Here goes:

* Trump went to Japan first then South Korea and China, their discussions dominated by working out what to do about North Korean nuclear program.

* Underline the alliance with Shinzo Abe. North Korea is top of Japan's list of concerns and Trump already has a great relationship with Abe. His stop there is intended to build on their relationship and reaffirm U.S. support.

* Assist Japan in developing a new constitution from the one the U.S. imposed to allow for their own self-defense.

* Build rapport with China leadership. To communicate to Xi Jinping that he either stop N.K. nuclear weapons program softly by asserting their economic leverage and make clear if that fails the U.S. will do it the hard way.

* To show up in person and present himself to American forces stationed in Japan and in South Korea and on the three carrier groups positioned around North Korea to reaffirm they are foremost and center and that America has their backs.

* Discuss missile defense system with South Korea.

* To discuss trade issues with Japan and South Korea

* Discuss trade and regional security with the leaders of Viet Nam and Philippines.

LaVar, since you said not to tell you nothing. Since you're willfully ignorant of what Trump was doing over there. Notice there's nothing about basketball players.

The basketball players were caught at a high end store. They were Louis Vuitton sunglasses. To put it racially, since that's where LaVar abides, his son lacked the paternal parenting common among families in the larger American culture lately characterized by racially oriented as white advantaged, when not characterized as white supremacist. That's saying LaVAr failed his son. And it shows in both father and son. They both make it show. By stealing high end sunglasses in a foreign country and by characterizing stealing and as no big thing that a full on president of the United States got his son cleared of that woeful dire situation.

UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero said Wednesday that the players stole from three stores. They were released from custody after posting bail early Nov. 8, on the condition that they surrender their passports; they had been staying at a lakeside hotel in Hangzhou prior to flying home.

"As long as my boy's back here, I'm fine,"

Well that's the point, Mr. Ball. You're fine because your son is back and your son is back because Trump intervened on his behalf. Not yours. Your son would be sitting in a Chinese jail for y-e-e-e-e-a-a-a-a-a-r-s had Trump not intervened. And you would not be fine. But there is something inside you, surrounding you, that makes it impossible to acknowledge what Trump did for your son and indirectly for you.

Instead Mr. Ball blabs incoherently and irrelevantly.

* I'm happy with how things were handled.

That will do. That should end the conversation right there. That's enough right there. That works. But no. There's more to LaVar's world.

* A lot of people like to say a lot of things that they thought happened over there.
* 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 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.

All probably true. All irrelevant. He flails like a child. Trump just spared Ball's son's sorry ass from being locked up for years in a foreign prison and with no way to fight their system of justice. Trump cut right through all that on his son's behalf. And he did that as incidental to vitally more important objectives on his agenda. The basketball player realease was a tiny side deal. An item sufficiently insignificant that it can actually make it to Reddit. It behooves LaVar Ball as his father to acknowledge that in the very least. But he cannot even do that. His world is too clouded. Too bad that is not possible for LaVar.  The racially clouded world that he lives in and moves through does not permit that simple ray of light to shine to illuminate his thick muddled head.

Such a well crafted tweet. Which of the other Republican candidates would have ushered communication about this, like this? Which ones would have provoked an acknowledgement from the three players, or smacked back at the short shrift by one of their dads? I can't see any of them doing this, except maybe the fat guy from Jersey. The rest of them would be constricted to projecting a proper presidential image defined from the outside, trapped in a role of appearances.