LaVar Ball may not be able to beat Jordan or Barkley, but he beat Marcellus Wiley

LaVar Ball (father of UCLA star Lonzo, but his own most notable basketball career accomplishment was averaging 2.2 points a game for Washington State) has long been bragging how he could “kill” Michael Jordan or Charles Barkley in one-on-one, but he actually showed off some of his skills on ESPN’s SportsNation Wednesday. Ball joined the SportsNation panel to discuss a variety of topics, including his comments about Jordan, and when he insisted “Michael Jordan too light in the tail,” Marcellus Wiley challenged him to a one-on-one game (on the conveniently adjacent court in the studio). Here’s the setup to that:

Ball then showed off some moves, including beating Wiley with a jab step after he told him he would:

After Ball scored and got the ball back, though, Wiley stole it from him, and tried his own offensive attempt. He couldn’t get by Ball, but he did drain a long-range turnaround shot. Ball took the ball, blew by him, and dunked on the next possession to make it 2-1, though:

Ball again took the ball afterwards, and beat a tired Wiley with another dunk:

As noted both from someone in studio and on Twitter, Ball’s decision to take the ball both after scoring and after Wiley scored was questionable:

https://twitter.com/AnthonyIrwinLA/status/842108833052864512

But Ball does have some moves, and he’s better at one-on-one than Wiley, a former NFL defensive end but someone with even less of a college basketball career than his own. Don’t expect him to be beating Jordan or Barkley any time soon, but he can beat some non-NBA players. It made for a funny segment, at the least, and one that may inflate Ball’s ego even more.

[Clippit]