Carolina has the answer to Bronny James playing for Coach K.

You have to hand it to the Duke marketing machine, which churns our stories ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime. Someone over there had the bright idea to approach ESPN and say Mike Krzyzewski was interested in doing an eight-part series on his practices and preparation, which is airing and on line now under the name of Earn Everything.

Who knows how it came up that LeBron James’ eighth-grade son Bronny would like to play for the Blue Devils. Bronny didn’t say that; it was his father, who played for Coach K on one, two or was it six Olympic teams? No problem that Bronny is only 14 years old; Duke will just have him reclassify from a high school freshman to a college freshman. Done.

I’m sure Carolina had nothing to do with what is a humorous gotcha retort that LaMelo Ball says he wants to play for the Tar Heels if and when he ever goes to college. You remember the flash-in-the-pan Ball family, right? Oldest son Lonzo went to UCLA for a year and now is with the Lakers, although The King himself stole the Balls’ thunder by joining the team as the highest-paid free agent of all time.

Lavar Ball, the big-mouth papa who bullied the Lakers into drafting Lonzo, pretty much ruined everything for his next two sons, LiAngelo and LaMelo, by pulling them out of high school and sending them off to Lithuania to play professionally, where they both bombed out and are now back in some LaLa Land high school.

Since the younger Ball boys got paid to play overseas and were spokesmen for their dad’s floundering Big Baller shoe brand, they are ineligible to play in college by seven times sideways. Even the NCAA could not come up with a way to declare them amateurs and, if so, UNC might laugh all the way to a response that said thanks, but no thanks.

But it would be a little poetic in the face of Duke’s marketing machine that created the ESPN Earn Everything documentary and surely had something to do with the Bronny James story, which would have him playing for a 77-year old Coach K, if UNC generated its own bit of off-the-wall publicity. Maybe Ol’ Roy would accept both LiAngelo and LaMelo Ball to his program – only if they were declared None and Done!

Featured image via Joshua Blanchard/Getty Images for Crosswalk Productions

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