President Donald Trump responded to LaVar Ball on Sunday via Twitter, after Ball downplayed Trump's involvement in getting LiAngelo Ball and two other UCLA Bruins basketball players back to the United States last week.
UCLA freshmen LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill, who had been detained in China on suspicion of shoplifting, landed in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening and addressed the media on Wednesday before being indefinitely suspended by the team.
Trump, who returned late Tuesday from a trip through Asia, raised the players' case with President Xi Jinping of China during a visit to Beijing last week. All three players thanked Trump during Wednesday's news conference after Trump tweeted that the players should thank him for stepping in and helping gain their release.
The players were arrested and questioned on Nov. 7 about stealing from high-end stores, including sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store next to the team's hotel in Hangzhou, where the Bruins had been staying before leaving for Shanghai to face Georgia Tech.
UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero said Wednesday that the players stole from three stores. They were released from custody after posting bail early Nov. 8 on the condition that they surrender their passports; they had been staying at a lakeside hotel in Hangzhou before flying home.
"As long as my boy's back here, I'm fine," LaVar Ball told ESPN. "I'm happy with how things were handled. A lot of people like to say a lot of things that they thought happened over there. Like I told him, 'They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes.' I'm from L.A. I've seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. My son has built up enough character that one bad decision doesn't define him. Now if you can go back and say when he was 12 years old he was shoplifting and stealing cars and going wild, then that's a different thing.