LaVar Ball Announced the End of His Marriage on a Livestream

LaVar Ball has spent a decade saying loud things into microphones, so it tracks that the end of his marriage came out the same way. On a livestream Wednesday, the Big Baller Brand founder told the internet that he and Tina Ball, his wife since 1997, have gone their separate ways.

The setting was peak 2026: a stream with the gamer-streamer N3on, the kind of broadcast where divorce news lands somewhere between a sneaker rant and a chat-box emoji spam. LaVar did not bury it.

"Tina decided to go her own way, that's why you don't see her right here," he said, according to Basketball Network. "She wanted to go do something else, and that's fine with me. We had our run."

The Big Baller breakup speech

He kept talking, because of course he did. The longer version, transcribed by TheGrio, got pointed. LaVar brought up Tina's age and the stroke she had in 2017, then landed on this: "Now you're not as beautiful to me again. The fact that if you decide to go this way, I'm gonna go that way. That's fine. It is what it is, man."

He also wanted everyone to know he is not sitting home alone. LaVar said he is already seeing someone new, and that she works for him. "It's somebody who's working for me," he said, per TheGrio.

Quick note on the paperwork, because the headlines ran ahead of the facts. On the stream, LaVar described a split. He did not say the word divorce. A few outlets framed it as Tina filing, but the man himself stopped at "she decided to go her own way." So: separation, confirmed by him. Divorce, not confirmed by him.

Who these two are

If you only know the Balls from the highlight clips, here is the short version. LaVar, 57, built an entire personality out of insisting his sons were the best who ever lived. He once said he could beat Michael Jordan one-on-one. He launched Big Baller Brand and put signature sneakers on all three boys before any of them played an NBA minute.

Tina Ball, maiden name Slatinsky, met LaVar at Cal State Los Angeles, where both played basketball. They married in 1997 and had Lonzo that same year, then LiAngelo in 1998 and LaMelo in 2001. Two of the three are current or former NBA players, which is a hit rate most parents would take.

The family has been through real things off the court. Tina suffered a near-fatal stroke in February 2017 that left her with aphasia. LaVar had his right foot amputated in early 2025 after a diabetes-related infection, followed by further surgery on the leg, as TheGrio and TMZ have reported.

The timeline

Tina has not made a public statement, and neither have the Ball sons as of this writing. Which means the only voice on the record so far is the one that has never once turned the volume down. Stay tuned, because this family does not tend to leave a microphone unused for long.