Lonzo Ball has reportedly discussed shuttering Big Baller Brand

Over the weekend, ESPN reported that Lonzo Ball was cutting ties with Alan Foster, a co-founder of Big Baller Brand who reportedly has served time in prison and could not properly account for over $1 million of the company’s money.

Ball, who reportedly owns 51 percent of the company, has since reportedly gotten out of business with Foster and might be considering a move to Nike.

Now, according to Ramona Shelburne of ESPN, is considering closing shop on the company altogether.

Or, as Ball’s manager D-Mo put it on Instagram: #DumpUrMerch.

As Shelburne points out, details on how all this is going to go are still coming in and the entire situation is hugely fluid right now and probably continue as such for the foreseeable future. As those details surface, we’ll continue to update the story.

Right now, my main takeaway is that unfortunately, Lonzo and his family were taken advantage of by someone they were unwise to trust in the first place. This kind of thing is not uncommon with athletes who come into riches as a result of their hard work, and it’s why it tends to be so vital for young athletes to have people around them who know what to look for from shady individuals.

The one bit of “good” news here is that it seems like Lonzo was able to catch this fairly early in the process. Tim Duncan once said he lost upwards of $20 million to a financial advisor who he didn’t catch as quickly as Lonzo seems to have responded here. While losing out on more than a million dollars is obviously not ideal, things could have gotten much worse.

We’ll see what other information comes out as Shelburne and others keep digging through whatever they can unearth but for right now, closing the doors on Big Baller Brand might really be the better move here. Just as important as that decision will be is that the entire family learn from this experience. Life can be one’s best teacher and in this case, they might be able to hit the reset button on this entire experiment with relatively less damage done than can sometimes occur as a result of business deals gone wrong.

For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts.