LaMelo, LiAngelo Ball Lithuanian jerseys to be for sale in U.S. in early January

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LaMelo (L) and LiAngelo Ball will report to Vytautas Prienai on Jan. 3. (Getty Images)
LaMelo (L) and LiAngelo Ball will report to Vytautas Prienai on Jan. 3. (Getty Images)

The looming arrivals of LaMelo and LiAngelo Ball mean first-division Lithuanian club Vytautas Prienai will soon have their jerseys available for sale in the United States.

Vytautas will sell the jerseys exclusively on Amazon in early January, the first step toward marketing the brothers stateside, a team official told Yahoo Sports.

The team has shipped approximately 500 game jerseys — half LaMelo jerseys and half LiAngelo ones — to an Amazon warehouse in the U.S. and is expected to ship more to deliver late in the first week of January, the team official said. For Vytautas, LaMelo and LiAngelo have provided the branding to create marketing deals in Lithuania and the U.S.

LaMelo, 16, and LiAngelo, 19, — the younger brothers of Los Angeles Lakers starting point guard Lonzo Ball — signed one-year deals with Vytautas on Dec. 11 and will report to Lithuania on Jan. 3. They are expected to make their debuts in a Baltic League game Jan. 9.

Vytautas plays in competitive games in the Baltic and Lithuanian leagues, which include teams that participate in EuroCup (Lietkabelis) and EuroLeague (Zalgiris). Several notable players spent time in the Lithuanian league before joining the NBA or other leagues, including Toronto Raptors center Jonas Valanciunas, the No. 5 pick in the 2011 NBA draft; Boston Celtics center Aron Baynes; ex-Houston and New Orleans forward Donatas Motiejunas; former New York Knicks forward Mindaugas Kuzminskas; and Isaiah Hartenstein, who was a second-round pick to Houston in the 2017 draft.

LaMelo, a gifted 6-foot-5 point guard and a consensus top-10 prospect in the class of 2019, left Chino Hills (Calif.) High School in October, while LiAngelo, a 6-foot-5 scorer, parted with UCLA last month after a shoplifting incident while with the Bruins in China.

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