LaMelo moved to Lithuania, nearly 6,000 miles from his hometown, Chino Hills, California, to pursue a professional basketball career. (Elvina Nevardauskaite)

Here at the arena, as practice begins, Melo seems just as out of place. His teammates begin shooting under the basket; Melo’s first shot is a three. The guys aren’t saying much; Melo yells “FACETIIIIME!!” as he pretends to dunk over Gelo. The guys dribble between cones with caution, as if afraid to color outside the lines; Melo bounces through with ease, adding in a crossover, between-the-legs combo.

Melo doesn’t look like, talk like or move like anyone else here. He is not like Denys Lukashov, a guard who won’t take the floor until he completes 10 pushups and 10 squats. He is not like Edvinas Seskus, the coach’s son who won’t leave the floor until he’s shot for 30 extra minutes.

No. Melo seems like he just wants to play. All day, all night. Next after next after next.

Melo’s game is still evolving, but right now he has no idea what his coach is saying to him in Lithuanian as the team prepares for the next drill. It’s hard enough to understand and communicate the intricacies of a play in your native language. But to do so without a team translator is even more difficult.

I watch Melo glance at his teammates, many a decade his senior, for rescue. And then I see him stare at his head coach’s hands, desperate to decipher Seskus’ meaning through gesture.

Does it matter, though? Melo’s going to Melo. He’s the kid who once pointed to the half-court line to signal to his defender he was about to pull up during the middle of a game in his sophomore year (he swished it). He’s the boy who, at 11 years old, took on a 17-year-old who clowned him—“You ain’t doin' nothin’. You a bitch. Your daddy got you out here”—during an AAU game. Little Melo splashed a three over him while screaming: “EYEBALLS, BITCH!!!”

But now Melo is in Lithuania, and he no longer has college eligibility, as players lose amateur status once they sign with an agent. LaVar removed Melo from the Chino Hills High School squad, alleging Chino Hills head coach Dennis Latimore treated Melo “like he’s just another one of the guys or somethin’, nothin’ special,” LaVar tells me.

Another “pea in a pod.”

(Latimore could not be reached. Chino Hills athletic director Sam Sabbara declined to comment.)

Soon after the Balls arrived, Vytautas left the Baltic Basketball League to create the Big Baller Brand Challenge. I ask Vilius Vaitkevicius, the team’s sports director, when the team decided to make the switch. “Maybe the day after they came,” he tells me. Indeed, the cameras that mobbed the family at Vilnius International Airport were intoxicating.

I pressed Vaitkevicius about why they named the series the Big Baller Brand Challenge. He responded with a smile. “You know what is the focus,” he says without elaborating, as if my question is self-explanatory: We all know why we’re in Lithuania.

The Challenge is five games against second-rate teams (two of them amateur) to guarantee minutes for Melo and Gelo, who log far fewer minutes in the more challenging portion of the team’s schedule, the Lithuanian Basketball League (LKL).

“It is just a joke,” Steponas Kairys, a Lithuanian coach who helped establish the LKL in 1993, tells me. He calls the Balls’ Lithuania experience a “show,” especially in that the team can guarantee playing time for the brothers without their earning it first. “It’s not real. It’s not honest.”

Too late. BBB and Vytautas are already cozy. “You take care of me in Lithuania, I take care of you in L.A.!” LaVar says, with his signature grin, to Seskus later in practice. The two show off their new handshake for the Ball in the Family cameras: spin around and dap. Pijus Mykolaitis, who handles the team’s media, watches in awe. “This is the best thing to happen to Lithuania in 10 years. This will be so fucking awesome,” Mykolaitis tells me.

Five days later, during Melo’s LKL debut against BC Lietkabelis on Jan. 13, the team and Melo are far from awesome. This contest counts for standings, unlike BBB Challenge games. And this one is against pros—last year’s runners-up—a departure from the first BBB game in which Melo breezed past the amateur squad of Zalgiris Kaunas.

“This is the best thing to happen to Lithuania in 10 years. This will be so f--king awesome.”

— Pijus Mykolaitis, Media Relations Rep for Vytautas

Here in Cido Arena, in Panevezys, the Lietkabelis players look like Space Jam Monstars compared to the lanky 6’5” Melo, all arms and legs.

Melo is used to playing up, though, with Lonzo hounding him in backyard battles all his life. “Zo for sure would go at Melo’s head. He’d try to bump [Melo] like, ‘He’s too little!’” John Edgar Jr., Lonzo’s best friend, tells me.

But Melo struggles early against Lietkabelis. He comes in with 2:17 left in the first, and Lietkabelis sticks 6’9”, 202-pound swingman Zanis Peiners on him as if to say: You might have your own shoe and TV show, but this is a grown man’s game. Lietkabelis at one point leads by 18, playing textbook European ball: crisp passes, purposeful dribbles, no showboating. In this game, the opponents are pure finesse, while Melo is all flash. He chucks two ill-advised treys and a contested runner in the lane, misfiring on all three. But that’s Melo’s mojo: bold, fast, fancy. “Melo’s always been the entertainer,” LaVar tells me.

Even back at Chino Hills, Melo was quick but in a hurry. Smart but reactive. He would take a poor shot four seconds into a possession that would make you shake your head and then steal the ball back and throw an impressive pass inside that could change your mind about him. He excites, he frustrates, he intrigues.

In other words, his basketball flaws are typical of a 16-year-old boy.

But he is not allowed to be one, nor is he treated like one, here in Panevezys as he battles the grown men of Lietkabelis. I watch him fling shots, impulsive to score rather than letting points come to him.

“He is very talented,” teammate Regimantas Miniotas tells me, before pausing. “Maybe some decisions are too, I don’t know, desperate. But he has been playing like that his whole life, and it’s difficult to change it so fast. But he has very big potential.”

Melo redeems himself, pressuring Lietkabelis’ Gintaras Leonavicius, even intercepting a pass into the post, but he can’t seem to find his rhythm. He only plays five minutes and finishes scoreless in a 95-86 loss. He sits on the bench, legs sprawled, looking more confused than upset as he stares at the hardwood. How could something so familiar seem so foreign?

The ride back to the hotel seems long. Two hours and some change, and not much to look forward to in the dark night, which looks like it could swallow cars whole. All I have are my headlights. I’m terrified of accidentally swerving off the road. There are no restaurants open. Even the hotel’s restaurant, Moon, closes at 10. This is perfect. … Look at the buzz around here! LaVar’s words echo in my mind, but the Ball in the Family cameras are off now. This is real life, not a reality show. There is no glamour, only uncertainty. There is a 10-hour time difference between Melo and his friends back home.

I imagine Melo in the back seat of his family’s rental, looking out the window, contemplating his place in all this. It’s hard trying to be the only star in the sky.