Chino Hills, LaMelo lives in his own
bubble of sorts.
He’s been to more countries in a year
than most will visit in a lifetime, but to
him, each stop is just a basketball court.
“I’m not like a sightseer,” LaMelo
says. “I don’t like no airplanes. I wish you
could just teleport.”
When the call came with a contract
offer from BC Vytautas, LaMelo had no
idea just how much it’d shake up the
basketball world.
“I was young, I wasn’t really thinking
nothing of it,” he says. “I was just
hooping, that’s all I was worried
about—like I said, I was just clueless.”
Moving back to high school a year
later? Essentially the same response.
“My dad called me to the hotel room
and said, ‘You want to go back to high
school?’” he says. “I said, ‘Yeah.’ I had
no clue [that was an option]. I was with
the JBA overseas and I was just
hooping.”
Part of the reason he moved back to
the United States to play high school
ball was so recruiting sites would start
placing him back on their rankings. When
asked to name the top-ranked players in
his high school graduating class, though,
he can’t.
LaMelo is just worried about doing
LaMelo.
He begins loading up his Mercedes
Benz G-Class SUV with basketballs for
his morning workout. His arms harm-
lessly bounce at his sides; his posture is
loose and relaxed.
If there’s any pressure that comes
with being an international basketball
phenom while just a teenager, he doesn’t
show it.
LaVar says the fact that the brothers
don’t have to fill the shoes of an NBA
superstar father eases the pressure they
face. They can just focus on being
themselves.
“What pressure is there on a kid who
can play basketball, come home and not
worry about, ‘Where’s your next food
gonna come from?’” Lavar asks. “People
think this is hard for him, but he loves
this.”
LaMelo is the opposite of uptight—
he’s not afraid to make fun of himself to
get a conversation going.
“Y’all wanna see the video of me
getting dunked on?” he laughs as he
pulls up Instagram between bites of
Wingstop.L
AVAR IS adamant that
he has never pushed
LaMelo to take his game
to the next level.
“I don’t push them, I
lead. If I lead you some-
where and you don’t feel
like following, go the
other way,” he says. “If I got to motivate
Melo, this ain’t for him. And that’s OK.”
LaMelo’s mother, Tina, is the most
low-profile member of the family, but
her support and love for the family
passion has played a crucial role in
LaMelo’s growth.
“My mom, we’ll be in the gym for10 hours and she’ll be there,” LaMelo
says. “I think that’s what really got it.
Everyone has fun when we play basket-
ball—watching us play is pretty much a
date for her.”
With his high school diploma already
in hand, the next step for LaMelo’s path
to the League will be playing profes-
sionally overseas (again). China and
Australia were the family’s main options
at press time.
LaMelo admits he wonders what life
would be like had he stayed at Chino
Hills, but he wouldn’t change it: “The
path I took allowed me to go to SPIRE
and meet people; that changed my life.”THE FUTURE ISSUE ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
46 SLAMONLINE.COM