There’s a guy in LaVar Ball’s kitchen in Chino Hills, pitching a TV show. Andy. He’s got gray hair and a bright yellow coat and yellow sunglasses perched on his forehead. His idea is a cartoon: Basketball players by day, superheroes by night. They live a double life, see? Andy’s cell-phone ringtone is the Inspector Gadget theme song, because he helped create Inspector Gadget. He’s a UCLA season-ticket holder. That’s how he met LaVar Ball and his three sons—Lonzo, 19, who is a virtual lock to be a top-three pick in the NBA draft this month; LiAngelo, 18, who just graduated from Chino Hills High and will follow in Lonzo’s footsteps this fall by playing at UCLA; and LaMelo, 15, who scored 92 points in a high school game last year and will now spend his last two years at Chino Hills as perhaps the single most watched prospect in the nation. In the cartoon, Andy says, the boys will be basketball players, as they are in life. “And for the superhero part, we’re going to bring in Stan Lee.” Stan and Andy are partners, Andy says.

It’s a rainy Friday in the middle of February, and the two younger boys have a playoff game tonight against Junípero Serra. Last year, with all three boys playing for Chino Hills, the team went 35–0 and finished atop the USA Today national rankings, earning the attention of pretty much everyone who follows the sport. They did things on a court no coach would sanction. They shot from half-court. They beat teams by 30, 40, 50 points. They were the Golden State Warriors reborn in a suburban gym. The NBA had been careening toward this style of play for years now—the pace of it, the wild shooting, the impatient abandon. Somehow the Ball boys were already there.

Now they’re trying to repeat without Lonzo, who’s currently seeking his own national championship with UCLA. All afternoon people come through the house hitting up LaVar for tickets. When LaVar goes to a Chino Hills game, he goes with 20, 30 people—family, friends, people he trains for his training business, reporters, Andy. Some huge portion of the seats are just his. He’s the gatekeeper. You have to come see him or join the other sad parents spending their Friday lining up outside a high school. “There’s folks in line right now. In the rain!” LaVar says, making an incredulous face. He stands tall and slightly bent in his kitchen, limping around like the former college basketball player he is, loud as a marching band. “This is for high school!”

A young kid in a hooded sweatshirt comes in with his mother. LaVar greets her, asks after her grandmother. He turns conspiratorially to the rest of us in the room. “Susan’s got a grandmother—80 years old. Beautiful. If I was an old man, I’d hit twice.” Susan doesn’t blink. Everyone here is used to LaVar Ball. And he in turn is used to the attention. People gravitate toward him, always have. Though obviously now things are different, stranger, more consequential. There is a wrecking ball of money and fame on its way. It brings out a certain element—a hunger—in those around you. People from LaVar’s past getting in touch. Representatives from shoe companies. Guys like me and Andy.

High school phenom LaMelo UCLA-bound LiAngelo

“You’ve got plutonium in a bottle,” Andy says to LaVar.

LaVar nods. He’s been preparing for this moment for so long already. He’s registered numerous trademarks. On the pool table, just outside the kitchen, are stacks of the family clothing line, Big Baller Brand. One “B” for each boy. No one goes to a game, or out in public with LaVar, without wearing the brand. When I arrived today, this was the first thing LaVar told me: “Yo, what size you wear? Medium? You’re a medium. You’re with us now.” He threw me a shirt, told me to change in the bathroom. There are journalistic ethics to consider, and I do. There is also the force of LaVar’s personality, the size of it, the way it overflows whatever room it’s in. I put on the shirt.

As more people wander in and out of the house, LaVar stands in the kitchen and predicts the future. By midsummer, Lonzo Ball will be a Los Angeles Laker. This is what LaVar wants, and the Lakers seem to love Lonzo, so everyone is going to spend between now and the NBA draft willing this outcome into existence. “It’s a better story,” LaVar says. “Hometown kid, the Ball fans are all here.” (In May, this dream will inch closer to reality when the Lakers land the second pick in the NBA draft.)

"If I’m not crazy, they’re not good enough.”

“And don’t think he going to the NBA and be happy to be there. He’s going to murder people. I think he’ll be a Laker. The only dude who can talk to him is Magic. He’s going to put his arm around him and talk to him. Magic won in his first year—as a rookie. That’s what Lonzo’s going to do. It took Jordan seven years.”