LaVar Ball, who has developed his own celebrity as the outspoken father of three prominent basketball-playing sons, has been insistent that he owes nothing to President Donald Trump. | Jae C. Hong/AP Trump: 'Ungrateful fool' LaVar Ball is 'a poor man’s version of Don King'

President Donald Trump wrote online Wednesday that he alone was responsible for orchestrating the release of three UCLA basketball players arrested for shoplifting in China, calling LaVar Ball, the father of one of the players, an “ungrateful fool” for his refusal to thank the president.

“It wasn’t the White House, it wasn’t the State Department, it wasn’t father LaVar’s so-called people on the ground in China that got his son out of a long term prison sentence - IT WAS ME,” Trump wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning. “Too bad! LaVar is just a poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair.”


Trump’s online comment appeared a direct response to Ball’s appearance on CNN Monday, where he pointedly refused to thank the president in an interview with anchor Chris Cuomo. Instead, Ball suggested the president had not done anything worthy of a thank you and that it was his own actions, not Trump’s that had secured the release of his son.

“Did he help the boys get out? I don’t know. I don’t know. If I was going to thank somebody, I’d probably thank President Xi. I’d thank him. He’s in China,” Ball said Monday night. “I'm not saying nothing to the president. I’m just saying, I'm not just saying thank you to anybody for nothing.”

Ball’s son, LiAngelo Ball, was one of three UCLA basketball players arrested at a Louis Vuitton store near their team’s hotel in China earlier this month on suspicion of shoplifting. All three players were released on bail and kept under a form of house arrest inside a hotel for several days until they were released without charges and allowed to return to the U.S.

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Trump, traveling in Asia at the time, told reporters he had raised the UCLA players’ situation personally with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Upon the players’ release, Trump took to Twitter to demand a thank you from the players, which he received at a press conference the next day where all three spoke.

But LaVar Ball, who has developed his own celebrity as the outspoken father of three prominent basketball-playing sons, including Los Angeles Lakers rookie Lonzo Ball, has been insistent that he owes nothing to the president. Asked by ESPN about Trump’s involvement in the episode, LaVar Ball replied “who,” a comment that appeared to goad the president into suggesting online last weekend that he “should have left them in jail!”

“Just think LaVar, you could have spent the next 5 to 10 years during Thanksgiving with your son in China, but no NBA contract to support you,” the president wrote on Twitter Wednesday. “But remember LaVar, shoplifting is NOT a little thing. It’s a really big deal, especially in China. Ungrateful fool!”