Lonzo Ball has been on the court plenty this preseason, but according to a new promotional video, the Lakers point guard has also been hard at work on his new signature shoe (even though it had already been put up for preorder).
“We decided to go back into the lab and remix the ZO2 Primes to the lightest basketball shoe ever made,” Ball said on Thursday about the shoe. Originally announced in May, the ZO2s will be the first sold by his family’s apparel company, Big Baller Brand. In the video, Ball said the reason behind tweaking the shoe was because the family saw so much support from fans and celebrities before the November drop date that it inspired BBB to improve the product. Or, y’know, Ball also realized that he would need to play in said signature shoes, which he already opted out of multiple times in summer league. One or the other.
Regardless of the reasoning, the production hiccup isn’t the best early sign for the Ball family’s attempt to undercut the traditional shoe hierarchy. And Lonzo’s explainer video, which he delivers with the passion of a college student retelling a mission trip (“this summer, ironically enough, we ended up being the ones inspired”), is a reminder of how he’s become the face for his family’s experiment.
Though the family patriarch, LaVar Ball, is often pointed to as being behind all Ball decision-making, Lonzo was very much the face in the announcement—he’s the one sharing his experience in the video, he’s the one on-camera, he’s even the one rapping in the background.
Only one year, I was done with the Bruins
Slaving for free, I was offered a movement
Millions of dollars, I took it, I’m human
That’s Lonzo, the face of the ZO2s, a 19-year-old figuring it out as he goes. It’s more relatable than the head of BBB, who offered his son that movement, putting a $495 price tag on what turned out to be an inadequate product. Then again, if the Big Ballers are willing to get real about the quality, maybe they’ll next get real about the price.