LaVar Ball hints at plan for Big Baller Brand competitor to NBA
The Junior Basketball Association is LaVar Ball’s first foray into forming a basketball league, but it may not be his last. During a recent Q&A with SB Nation’s Ricky O’Donnell, the Big Baller Brand CEO discussed the possibility of a successor to the Junior Basketball Association while pontificating on defying expectations for the future expansion of his burgeoning business empire.
“And then all the sudden this league pops up, something that has the potential to be one of the greatest things ever on the fact that maybe in 5-10 years, maybe we have 30 teams,” he said. “How about I create my own league now. And now you have two leagues like we had the ABA and NBA. It has potential.”
At present, the JBA is far from a competitor for the NBA. Where the latter is currently open to all players who are at least one year removed from their respective high school graduations, the former limits participation to prospects just under that age range for up to two years.
And while the JBA pays $3,000 per month during the summer predominantly to players whose talents generally didn’t land them on college recruiting radars, the NBA shells out hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on the very lowest end—but typically well into the millions—to the best players on the planet.
For the JBA to truly infringe on the NBA’s territory, then, LaVar’s league would have to expands its schedule into the fall, winter and spring and up its salaries by orders of magnitude.
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