LaMelo Ball Hires Driver After Pattern of Damaging Luxury Vehicles

LaMelo Ball has hired a personal driver. The decision came after a pattern of acquiring expensive vehicles and then destroying them—a habit his older brother Lonzo found baffling enough to discuss publicly on a podcast.

Lonzo revealed the arrangement during an appearance on the "Curious Mike" podcast, where he was asked which member of the Ball family spent the most money. The answer was clear: LaMelo. "He's got 10 cars," Lonzo said, laying out the scope of his younger brother's collection. The Minnesota Timberwolves guard, now 25, has accumulated a fleet that includes multiple million-dollar exotic vehicles—Lamborghinis and similar high-performance models that seem to have a short lifespan in his possession.

The pattern that prompted the driver hire is straightforward in its absurdity. LaMelo would purchase a car worth a million dollars, then promptly damage it. "He'll buy a $1 million car and then just immediately mess it up," Lonzo said, shaking his head at the logic. "I've never understood that. You just bought that? And then you wrecked it? You could've just got a beater." The frustration in the statement is real—not moral judgment, but the simple bewilderment of watching someone repeat the same expensive mistake.

Lonzo was careful to frame the issue in a particular way. His brother "doesn't get into accidents," he said, but rather "has a lot of situations on the road." The distinction matters, perhaps, though the end result—damaged luxury cars—remains the same. A personal driver reduces the number of times LaMelo sits behind the wheel, which logically reduces the number of opportunities for those situations to occur.

Lonzo also suggested a simpler solution: buy cheaper cars. The economics of it are obvious. If you're going to damage vehicles regularly, the financial sting is considerably less when the vehicle costs thirty thousand dollars instead of a million. But that advice, sensible as it is, apparently didn't take hold until the driver hire became necessary.

The conversation happened against the backdrop of Lonzo's own complicated relationship with professional basketball. He was drafted second overall by the Lakers in 2017, later played for New Orleans and Chicago, and joined the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2025. The Utah Jazz acquired him in a trade in February 2026, then waived him before he ever played a game. His career has been derailed repeatedly by injuries. After appearing in just 35 games during the 2021-22 season, he spent more than two years sidelined—"a thousand and something days," as he put it. He's made peace with the possibility that he may never return to his former level as a player.

Meanwhile, LaMelo's career has followed a different trajectory. The Hornets selected him third overall in the 2020 NBA Draft. He became a two-time All-Star before Charlotte traded him to the Timberwolves in June, sending him north along with Josh Green in exchange for Naz Reid and multiple draft picks. The driver hire suggests that as LaMelo settles into his new role in Minnesota, someone has decided it's time to keep him off the roads.