Lonzo and LaMelo Ball will meet for the first time against one another on Friday in an official basketball game. However, their battles against one another date back many, many years to the backyard in Chino Hills.
While the brothers rarely played 1-on-1 due to the age and size discrepancy, that doesn’t mean there weren’t backyard duels. With the benefit of three brothers, the boys could easily set up 2-on-2 or 3-on-3 contests.
“We played 3-on-3 pretty much every day,” Lonzo said. “So we always went at it. I think you see that in (LaMelo’s) game. He’s not he’s not afraid of anybody. He’s always played up and it’s always been that way for him.”
The youngest in the family, LaMelo held his own in the battles. As Lonzo notes, it was the beginning of LaMelo playing against older and bigger competition. It would be a recurring theme for LaMelo as he eventually played as a 16-year old professionally in Lithuania then as an 18-year old in Australia.
Before those stops, though, LaMelo played in his backyard and took more bumps and bruises than in any professional league.”
“Nobody took it easy,” he said.” I mean, that’s probably the most competitive basketball I’ve been in (was) in the backyard. Fighting, scrapping, falling on concrete, playing hella hard. I mean, parents getting scared when their kids go back there. So it was a whole lot. Something you just had a witness for real.”
Those backyard games clearly were as memorable as they were tough and served as a place where the Ball brothers crafted their skills years before landing in the NBA.