“Who?” LaVar Ball said when asked about Trump’s involvement. “What was he over there for? Don’t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out.”

When ABC’s Michael Del Moro asked LaVar Ball on Sunday about the back-and-forth with the president, Ball claimed to not be interested in making any further statements. But he couldn’t help one more jab.

“Did he go visit them in jail?” Ball asked. “Did you go visit them in jail? If you went to visit them in jail then I would say, ‘Thank you.’”

LiAngelo Ball and his teammates, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill, were arrested on suspicion of shoplifting while in China with their teammates. Mr. Trump, who was in the middle of a tour of Asia, raised the case with President Xi Jinping of China, and the three players were allowed to return to the United States.

The president’s chief of staff, John Kelly, described to The Times how the episode had played out.

“Our president said to Xi, ‘Do you know anything about these knuckleheads that got caught allegedly stealing?’” Mr. Kelly said. Unaware of the episode, the Chinese president dispatched an aide to get more information. “The president was saying, ‘It’s not too serious. We’d love to see this taken care of in an expeditious way,’” Mr. Kelly added.