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Los Angeles Lakers Larry Nance, Jr., Ivica Zubac and David Nwaba took their rookie teammates Josh Hart, Thomas Bryant and Kyle Kuzma paintballing over the weekend to welcome them to the team.
Perhaps we should’ve expected this, but the event somehow turned into Nance roasting Zubac on Twitter, as is tradition.
Things started innocently (and typically) enough with the ever-confident Zubac proclaiming to Mark Medina of the Southern California News Group that he was “the best paintball player” of any of the Lakers following the team’s first summer league post-practice media availability.
His brag did not go unnoticed, and given that Nance has previously went around calling Zubac his son and generally seems to enjoy very few things (other than dunking on people) more than ribbing Zubac to reporters or on social media, we probably should have been ready for what came next: Nance quote-tweeting Medina and serving ups some trash talk for Zubac:
I mean he was definitely the MVP of my squad.. we were on different teams though ♂️ https://t.co/ePOjanFJUQ
— Larry Nance Jr (@Larrydn22) July 5, 2017
Nance wasn’t done there:
Hart ranked you 1st and himself 2nd. Kuzma liked Hart & Nwaba. Zubac ranked himself #1. How do we settle this? Video evidence? Vote? https://t.co/1uWPwcNl4q
— Mark Medina (@MarkG_Medina) July 5, 2017
So Zu was the only one that put himself in the top 2? That definitely says something.. I agree with JHart https://t.co/sApo0nINdx
— Larry Nance Jr (@Larrydn22) July 5, 2017
Zubac clapped back...
I'm only one who's realistic over here https://t.co/DPpxzUhBgX
— Ivica Zubac (@ivicazubac) July 5, 2017
... But I think we know who won this round. Sorry, Ivica, but Larry is still the Lakers honorary “Supa Hot Fire”:
Please let these guys play together for 15 years and get their own reality show.
Harrison Faigen is co-host of the Locked on Lakers podcast (subscribe here), and you can follow him on Twitter at @hmfaigen.