Suspended UCLA basketball player LiAngelo Ball is going to play in Lithuania after a very public feud between his father Lavar Ball and the president over his role in saving his son and two other players from imprisonment in China.
The country of Lithuania is located on the coast of the Baltic Sea, wedged between Latvia to the North, Poland to the South, and Belarus to the East.
LiAngelo and his brother LaMelo Ball have signed to play with the Lithuanian team, Vytautas Prienai, for the rest of the season, according to their agent Harrison Gaines.
President Donald Trump said that the family was ungrateful for his role in saving their son and two other UCLA players after they were accused of shoplifting while visiting China.
"Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal," Trump tweeted.
"I should have left them in jail!" he added.
Lavar Ball later pulled pulled his son out of UCLA, saying that the suspension was too harsh.
“You shouldn’t hang them on the cross for this long for that,” he said. “A kid wants to play basketball all his life. You take that away, that’s worse than jail. Why should we as parents and adults keep jumping on them? It’s not like we’re going through life without making mistakes.”
Carlos Garcia
Staff Writer