LaVar Ball's CNN Interview Was The Disaster Everyone Thought It Would Be

The consensus leading up to the LaVar Ball interview with Chris Cuomo on CNN was it would be a complete unmitigated disaster.

Maybe that was shooting a bit low.

Ball went on the network to discuss his son LiAngelo, who was bagged for shoplifting with a pair of teammates while on a UCLA basketball trip to China, and his growing feud with President Donald Trump.

The conversation went off the rails from the beginning and never came close to getting back. Though the conversation sounded civil from the onset, it was actually just the elder Ball attempting to rationalize his son shoplifting expensive merchandise while representing his school in China.

LaVar Ball, the father of a basketball player freed from China who also recently ran afoul of President Trump on Twitter, talks with @ChrisCuomo: "I don't have to go around saying thank you to everybody" https://t.co/Y1HRSycqyD pic.twitter.com/a7in4bLogG

— CNN (@CNN) November 21, 2017

"He fessed up to it. … It was an impulse thing, a bad decision at a bad time, that's all it was for an 18-year-old who never done anything wrong," says LaVar Ball, father of UCLA basketball player LiAngelo Ball https://t.co/NE3kictbKv pic.twitter.com/ZGobFZ6Aug

— CNN (@CNN) November 21, 2017

Cuomo asked Ball about the boys thanking Trump for getting them out of China, but Ball, who vehemently believes a thank you isn’t imperative, asked Cuomo if he thanked the doctor who delivered him instead of answering the question. Then Ball went completely out of his mind.

LaVar Ball on why he didn’t thank President Trump for bringing his son, LiAngelo Ball, home: “I would’ve said thank you if he would’ve put him on his plane and took him home. … There’s a lot of room on that plane” https://t.co/1HKetn552b pic.twitter.com/7BQhH0ZdyQ

— CNN (@CNN) November 21, 2017

In fact, the only thank you that was given came in this unusual exchange in which Ball coerced Cuomo into thanking him in the middle of the interview for no apparent reason.

This is an impressive level of nonsense pic.twitter.com/pAEamAi74d

— Pete Blackburn (@PeteBlackburn) November 21, 2017

Of course, the closing stages of the interview became arguments over who was at fault for the conversation going in circles. To the surprise of nobody, nothing really was accomplished in the *discussion,* but it did end in the least surprising way possible.