“Where’s our money?”
It was early August 2018 and the Junior Basketball Association (JBA) — the college-alternative pro league that LaVar Ball created — was holding its first-ever playoffs at tiny Eagle’s Nest Arena, the home of California State-Los Angeles. And Alan Foster, the now-former business partner of the Ball family, kept dodging that same question from the league’s disgruntled players.
“It was kinda falling down from the inside,” Nick Lovelace, a forward for the JBA’s Houston Ballers, told The Post.
Throughout its lone season of existence, the JBA was plagued by missed paychecks, Foster’s shady business dealings and allegedly cooked-up stats that undermined the league.
Big Baller Brand and JBA representatives declined requests for comment for this story via Instagram and email. Foster could not be reached.
But through interviews with five JBA players and one league staffer, a picture of the league’s rampant dysfunction and possible fraud becomes clear.
The JBA, which was launched in 2017 by Ball in close association with Big Baller Brand, touted an alternative track to the pros for prospects ranging from 16 to 21 years old. Eight teams were launched in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas. And in homage to the league’s apparel sponsor — Big Baller Brand — every team was nicknamed the “Ballers.”
“For decades, the NCAA has run a business that has exploited thousands of teens, while college institutions, coaches, media conglomerates, and corporate sponsors have all profited from the model,” Ball wrote as the league’s mission statement.
“The JBA is a long-awaited solution to this ongoing problem.”
The league sold players on a professional lifestyle of being paid at least $3,000 per month to travel and play basketball. They even told players they would sell their jerseys and give them a piece of the profits (this figure was to be somewhere between 40 and 60 percent, according to players).
The reality of the JBA was far less glamorous.
The sales of jerseys, which were set to be priced at $80, were scrapped. Teams and league staffers sometimes got stranded for hours at the airport without transport. And the games themselves were often played in half-empty stadiums after the league priced the tickets starting at $40.
“To see kids that they label as like ‘rejects’ and ‘people who can’t get into college’ … I wouldn’t pay $40 for one ticket,” Lovelace said.
Even the JBA “USA” team, which played 17 games in Europe after the season had ended, wasn’t immune from the league’s broken promises.
The team, a group of handpicked players from throughout the league (including LaMelo and LiAngelo Ball), was followed around by a Netflix crew for weeks, according to players. Players were told they would make “thousands” per episode, and yet like many of the JBA’s other enticements, the show never came to fruition (the show was separate from the Ball-centric “Ball in the Family” show that streams on Facebook).
“It left a lot of us in a bad position expecting to make more money than we actually did,” said Calvin Brown, who played for the league’s New York team as well as its USA squad.
The USA team was supposed to return overseas after Thanksgiving to play in China. But players claimed that trip never happened in large part because LaMelo had started playing at the Spire School — a prep school in Ohio — and LiAngelo was recovering from an ankle injury.
This was the beginning of the end.
The feeling around the league is LaVar gave up on the league after his two younger sons were no longer involved.
The league never wanted to live without them, so it died.
Brandon Williams, an ex-JBA announcer, claims “initial talks” to bring the league back under a “new business model” have begun, though details are scarce.
In the months after the canceled China trip, players didn’t receive as much as a text, email or call to let them know the league would not be returning.
The remainder of their deals — most players signed two-year contracts — have not been paid out. The league’s Instagram account deleted all but one post, effectively wiping all memory of the league from existence.
Its one remaining post, dated Feb. 1, 2018, shows the Big Baller Brand logo split alongside the JBA emblem, the marks resting on a black background. The JBA, with LaVar as its rabble-rousing ambassador, was born directly from the BBB imprint — an apparel company that also appears to be dying.
“We were dealing with people that worked with a warehouse with clothing apparel, and all of a sudden they’re running a league with players, and their lives [are] pretty much in their hands,” said league PA announcer Manny Alvarez.
There are some success stories.
Just days after the playoffs concluded, Seattle Ballers guard Brandon Willis FaceTimed the Ball patriarch to express his gratitude for the exposure the league granted him.
The then-20-year-old had given up the remaining two years of his college eligibility (after playing at Division II Tarleton State and Alderson Broaddus) to take a chance on the JBA and move up the basketball ladder.
Willis only played for the last two-and-a-half weeks of the league but made an impression as a capable player, scoring 23 points in his debut game and winning the league’s modest 3-point contest. He’s now mulling offers from leagues in Romania, Turkey and Croatia.
Willis’ success represents the extinct league’s ideal of providing an opportunity for overlooked young players taking a less conventional route.
“I thought it could be something very special,” Willis told The Post.
But Willis’ experience also underscores the JBA’s crippling financial issues.
Willis is one of two players The Post interviewed who is still owed money by the JBA. The league didn’t pay him a single cent for his stint, nor did it even give him a contract to sign.
This problem was hidden from those watching on Facebook Live and the sprinkling of fans who attended the games live.
‘It was kinda falling down from the inside’
Atlanta Ballers forward Fionn Brown claims he was also stiffed. He was only partially paid, and is now ruing his decision to join the league.
Brown was just 17 years old — a recent high school grad — when the league started, and says he held interest from Division I universities Denver and Troy. Academic issues put his college prospects in limbo, and Brown rushed his decision.
“These folks preached something good to us,” he told The Post.
Brown says had he known the league would be gone within two months, he would’ve played a post-grad year at a school like Hargrave Military, which boasts pros like David West, Montrezl Harrell and Terry Rozier as alums.
“They just completely messed me up,” said Brown, who is out of basketball and without college eligibility thanks to his association with JBA.
LaVar Ball entrusted at least two people (other than himself) to make league decisions within the JBA: Foster, who was fired by Lonzo Ball in March as his manager for reportedly defrauding him of approximately $1.5 million, and Wayne Merino, the former California state title-winning basketball coach who was fired after playing foreign recruits with fake visas. Merino was named the “JBA director,” and it’s not clear if Foster, who co-founded Big Baller Brand, was given a formal title.
Alvarez, who also wrote for the league’s website and performed play-by-play duties, says he thinks Ball mostly focused on the Los Angeles team that his sons played for, merely lending his “two cents” for league-wide matters.
The accounts of former JBA players show that Ball granted Foster incredible power and responsibility within the league.
Foster served as a point of contact for most players and was the one they complained to regarding their missing money. He was the one who touted the failed jersey sale and Netflix ideas, players said. He even molded Alvarez’s written coverage of the league, giving him a directive to not talk critically about the NBA, NCAA or Euroleague.
But not everything Foster did was necessarily with LaVar’s blessing. Multiple players claim that Foster often operated behind LaVar’s back, with one calling the basketball patriarch “clueless” on the league’s business dealings.
“I would say at least half the league was skeptical of the guy,” Calvin Brown said about Foster. “Just a shady guy. And shady guys give off shady vibes.”
Brown, who fully received his money, still harbors negative feelings toward Foster and says Ball was largely left in the dark about the league’s payment issues.
Willis, who didn’t have the same luck getting paid, had a more blunt accusation about Foster.
“He was pocketing the money,” Willis claims.
At the very least, Foster was aware of the league’s payroll issues.
In a 2018 episode of “Ball in the Family,” Foster said he would work to “get to the bottom of it and find out exactly what happened” in response to Chicago player Shawn Lee telling him he was missing three paychecks.
It’s Foster to whom most players attribute the league’s dysfunction. Ball — the firebrand responsible for Foster’s involvement in the league — largely remains absent from their scorn.
“You get to know LaVar a lot more on a personal level … He’s just such a good guy, he just wants the best for his kids and everything like that,” Harrison Rieger, formerly of the Chicago Ballers, told The Post. “He probably says some outlandish things on TV, but that’s marketing.”
At what point, though, does helping your kids hurt the legitimacy of your league?
It’s July 26, 2018, and the Los Angeles Ballers have just defeated their Houston counterparts by a video game score of 169-153.
LiAngelo led the game with 52 points, while his brother LaMelo amassed an equally ridiculous 34-point, 20-assist, nine-rebound statline.
According to the JBA’s website, LiAngelo led the short-lived league in scoring with a mind-boggling 49.9 points per game. LaMelo sat in second with 40.0 per contest.
Yet multiple players suggested that certain players in the league — not limited to the Ball brothers — received egregious inflations of their stats.
Alvarez said three college interns were responsible for keeping the league’s stats, but that they had no ulterior motives as far as he could see.
Some players disagree.
“It didn’t sound real, the way that they exaggerated,” Lovelace said.
“There was favoritism for guys that LaVar liked, I’m pretty sure he wanted to help them as much as he could,” Willis added.
It’s not completely clear why some players benefited from this exaggeration more than others.
One non-Ball who allegedly benefited from this exaggeration was Jordan Ray of the Atlanta Ballers.
Ray was apparently close to the Ball family before the league’s launch, describing himself as a “family friend” in an interview. But his credentials, which the league brazenly touted, seem fishy at best.
His JBA profile claims he received offers from Michigan, Michigan State and UConn, among other D-I powerhouses. Yet 247Sports, which documents all formal offers given to recruits, shows Ray received no offers — let alone any visits — from any of these programs in 2018.
Alvarez was responsible for writing some of the league’s bios, and said due to the time constraints under which they had to finish the posts, there was not much of a fact-checking process in place.
“We kind of trusted the answers that all these … players gave us,” he said.
Ray declined multiple requests for comment.
Amid success stories like Willis, the league’s questionable anointing of Ray serves as a reminder that the league’s priority was to make Ball’s sons — and anyone else he chose — look good.
Regardless, with the Ball brothers routinely attracting hundreds of thousands of viewers per stream, most players were willing to accept this deal.
“I knew what I was signing up for,” Lovelace says now.
In half-empty gyms across the country, Ball tried — and failed — to take on the NCAA.
Yet players were left to determine the league’s demise at their own pace.
Rieger grew skeptical when the USA team’s China tour was canceled. Willis heard a few months ago that LaVar had spent too much money, and the league wouldn’t return. Calvin Brown grasped the league’s financial woes when he realized new players were just getting used jerseys with the old names taped over.
The JBA disappeared as quickly as it arrived.
In October, the NBA’s G-League announced the implementation of “select contracts” for elite high school prospects that would pay players $125,000 per season.
It’s the JBA’s idea, just on a higher level.
Players will make far more than they were supposed to make in the JBA, and know that the league will exist in a year’s time.
And yet, there may have been a world where the JBA and G-League could have actually co-existed. Not everyone would have been good enough to soak up a hefty salary in the G-League. The misfits, dropouts and forgotten prospects still exist.
But the JBA, forever stuck between golden ticket and racket, is gone.