Ball In The Family

On August 29, 2017, Facebook Watch launched its original programming push with a reality series that followed the most polarizing family in basketball. Ball In The Family promised an unfiltered look at the Balls of Chino Hills, California, patriarch LaVar, matriarch Tina, and their three basketball-playing sons. Over six seasons and 116 episodes, the show documented a family that treated professional sports as a birthright and public attention as a given.

Produced by Bunim/Murray Productions, the company behind Keeping Up with the Kardashians, the series adopted a cinéma vérité style that followed the family through NBA drafts, overseas stints, business ventures, and personal crises. LaVar Ball served as executive producer, giving him unusual control over how the family was portrayed. The result was a show that critics dismissed as a vanity project but that nonetheless attracted millions of weekly viewers on Facebook.

The series captured key moments in modern basketball history: Lonzo Ball's draft night, LiAngelo's arrest in China, LaMelo's unconventional path through Lithuania and Australia to the NBA. It also documented Tina Ball's recovery from a stroke in 2017, offering glimpses of vulnerability beneath the family's brash public image. Though the show has been on hiatus since December 2020, its episodes remain available for free on Facebook Watch.[edit]

The Ball family operates like a basketball startup, with LaVar Ball as CEO and chief marketing officer. From their home base in Chino Hills, California, he engineered a plan to turn his three sons into NBA players before any of them had graduated high school. The reality series captures this process in granular detail, following the family through practices, business meetings, and the constant churn of social media attention.

Lonzo Ball entered the NBA as the second overall pick in the 2017 draft, joining the Los Angeles Lakers. His rookie season forms the backbone of early episodes, with cameras capturing his adjustment to professional basketball alongside the launch of Big Baller Brand, the family's apparel company. LaVar's public feuds with NBA figures, including LeBron James and President Donald Trump, generate headlines that the show weaves into its narrative.

Season 2 takes a dramatic turn when LiAngelo Ball is arrested in China for shoplifting while on a UCLA team trip. The incident derails his college career and sends him on a winding path through professional basketball overseas. Meanwhile, LaMelo Ball, still in high school, decides to skip college entirely and play professionally in Lithuania. The family relocates to the small Baltic nation for Season 3, a surreal chapter that finds the Balls adapting to life in a foreign country while LaMelo plays for BC Prienai.

The show's middle seasons document the family's growing empire and its cracks. LaVar launches the Junior Basketball Association (JBA), a league designed as an alternative to the NCAA, and LaMelo becomes its star. Lonzo's trade from the Lakers to the New Orleans Pelicans in 2019 reshapes the family's trajectory. Season 5 follows LaMelo to Australia, where he plays for the Illawarra Hawks in the NBL, a move that transforms him from a curiosity into a legitimate NBA prospect.

Throughout the series, the family's dynamics remain the constant anchor. Tina Ball's recovery from her 2017 stroke provides emotional weight, her quiet presence contrasting with LaVar's bombast. The brothers navigate their own relationships, Lonzo the established star, LiAngelo the journeyman, LaMelo the rising phenom. The show never shies from controversy, but it also reveals moments of genuine family bonding: dinners, celebrations, the small rituals that persist amid the chaos of fame.

The series builds toward LaMelo's entry into the NBA, a culmination of the family's decade-long project. Season 6, released during the COVID-19 pandemic, captures his draft preparation and the family's virtual draft night gathering. The show ends on a note of anticipation, with the Ball family's core mission, all three sons in the NBA, nearly complete.[edit]