By: Bruce Goodwin II
Cassius
It was last month that LaVar Ball revealed that due to medical complications, he had a portion of his foot amputated, and in a new SLAM cover story, the Ball patriarch is ready to open up about the health scare.
Ball shares the cover with his sons, Lonzo, LaMelo, and Li-Angelo. All three have had basketball dreams since playing together at Chino Hills High School. Both Lonzo and LaMelo were top-10 draft picks, and despite Gelo not making the jump, he’s found his path thanks to the viral hit song “Tweaker.”
But just as all three of his sons began to prosper, LaVar was in the hospital as a result of neglecting his health and penned a piece for SLAM describing the
emotional toll.
“I had an infection on my foot that started spreading through my blood due to not paying attention to my diabetes. I ended up having to get my leg amputated,” LaVar said. “First, they cut off a couple of toes. Then they cut off my foot. Then they said,
‘We gotta go almost knee high for another surgery.’ Three surgeries. And then there were also the blood transfusions. Not one, not two, not three, four different times.”
The 57-year-old reveals the dark thoughts about death he had at the time as he underwent procedure after procedure.
He added, “All those surgeries and blood transfusions, it made me question whether it was worth going through it sometimes. It made me think, Man, just kill me and let me go about my business. It made me think that maybe it’s time for me to
shut it down.”
But in the end, LaVar says it was his sons coming together that helped him push through, which explains the huge smile he had on his face when he was spotted in a wheelchair shortly after the amputation and still spewing Michael Jordan trash talk.
“It makes me feel way better in looking at the outcome to go forward because I still want to be on this journey. And I look at it like this, too: I got a lot of limbs to come off. I’m hard to kill. I got some bigger stuff that the Big Baller still gotta do. And that guy upstairs put me here for a reason. And I’m gonna get it done,” LaVar said.
LaVar goes on to defend how equally proud he is of his kids, whether they find success on the field or in the recording booth. He prides himself on giving his sons the tools needed to thrive even once he’s gone. And for him, it’s not even about the hundreds of millions of dollars they’ve collectively earned. He ends the piece with,
“Because after you bought everything—what’s really left?”
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