De’Aaron Fox put the clamps on Lonzo in their Elite Eight match-up and tuned up UCLA for 39 points. To no ones surprise, LaVar Ball was a motivating factor for the Kentucky guard.
Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Abrams did an extensive piece on De’Aaron Fox, in it he breaks down how LaVar’s yapping provided fuel for De’Aaron Fox.
Fox dominated the rematch. He scored Kentucky’s first eight points and hit his first five shots, amassing 39 points in the 86-75 win. Lonzo Ball finished with 10 points, eight assists and four turnovers.The outcome did little to silence LaVar Ball.
“They came up short, but one game doesn’t define his season,” Ball told ESPN.com. “No one is going to take De’Aaron Fox over him because of one game. It’s about your body of work, and people know what he can do.”
Fox’s performance was the product of hard work, like the time he scored around 50 points in a game but missed a handful of free throws. His dad had him practice from the charity stripe right after the game. “Only way he can get better,” the elder Fox says. “He could have had about 60 points if he would have hit those free throws.”
His parents taught him to be humble early on, before Kendrick Lamar made humility a thing.“You can relax [at home], you can let your hair down here kind of thing,” his mother, Lorraine Fox, says. “But when you’re out and about, don’t embarrass me.”
Lonzo Ball, for his part, is quiet on the court, De’Aaron Fox says. The rest—meaning, of course, LaVar—is just background noise to be tuned out.“I don’t want anyone talking for me,” Fox says. “I’ll do it myself.” And yet, Aaron Fox has seen the results of two head-to-head matchups with the UCLA guard. So, in this case, he backs De’Aaron after all, LaVar Ball-style.
“My son already ate his ass up twice,” Aaron Fox says of Lonzo Ball. “[LaVar] can say what he wants to say. I just tell him to go back and watch the film. That’s it. All that yap, yap, yapping, I don’t even got to respond to that. We played them twice. Twice his son got outplayed. I always tell [De’Aaron], let your game speak for it. You ain’t got to talk. You ain’t got to fuss.”
Men lie, women lie, numbers don’t.
These two may be seeing a lot of each other in the years to come. If Lonzo lands in LA and Fox goes 5 to the Kings as many projections currently predict this should be quite the head-to-head.