Chino Hills Conveniently Fires Head Coach Who LaVar Ball Tormented All Season, Ex-Coach Is 'Relieved'

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LaVar Ball’s enormous ego has ignited the internet far more times that any of us expected. For many of us, LaVar’s’Overbearing Dad’ routine has mostly elicited a shake of the head with a ‘Holy shit, I’m glad that guy’s not my dad’ response. The dude’s been over-the-moon obnoxious, but for the most part, harmless.

Well, that’s changed now, as he’s gotten his sons’ high school coach fired for single-handedly poisoning the locker room.

Chino Hills first year head coach Stephan Gilling went 30-3 and finished just shy of winning a state title, but was relieved of his duties publicly feuding with the father of his two star players, LaMelo and LiAngelo. Not once. Not twice. But every game.

LaVar told ESPN that he did not get Gilling fired, despite multiple reports that he was unhappy with how the coach handled the team. LaVar released the below statement.

“He’s a really good guy, but I’m just not sure he was experienced enough,” LaVar Ball said. “But I wasn’t the reason why he’s gone. It was protocol that the job is open every year.”

Various accounts from the season tell a wholly different story. Back in March, For The Win published a story that demonstrated just how overbearing and disrespectful LaVar was to the first-year coach, and it’s pretty unbelievable.

“Chino Hills (Calif.) boys basketball head coach Stephan Gilling hasn’t forgotten the deep voice shouting in the second half from the stands at a quarter-full Orleans Arena in Las Vegas. He knew exactly who was yelling. It was LaVar Ball, the father of Chino Hills’ LiAngelo, LaMelo and UCLA star Lonzo.

“Double team! Double team!”

The first-year head coach had won his first nine games of the season, but after a pair of close wins at the mid-December Tarkanian Classic, the Huskies faced another test against Roosevelt (Calif.) High. They went into the locker room at half trailing by 12. Chino Hills had been double teaming Roosevelt’s shooters for the first half, but Gilling needed to make an adjustment.

“I go into the locker room, and I tell the guys to stop double teaming – just stay with your man,” Gilling said. “You do that, we’ll definitely get stops and come back and win.”

Yet, there was that voice again in the second half: “Double team! Double team!”

When Ball would shout for the double-team, Chino Hills players reluctantly followed his instruction. Gilling would yell, “Stop trapping!”

This continued for much of the second half until, eventually, Gilling’s message got through to his players. Chino Hills stuck to man-to-man defense and rallied to win, 76-68.

Gilling remembers an incensed Ball bolting straight for the locker room.

“He comes to me and says, ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ I said, ‘What do you mean? I’m trying to win the game.’

“He turns around and walks to our locker room,” Gilling said. “I said, ‘LaVar, don’t go into the locker room.’ He continues walking. I said, ‘LaVar, why are you trying to embarrass me?’ And he just kept walking and goes into the locker room. He’s in there sitting down with the team. And I’m like, ‘LaVar, get out!’”

Gilling says Ball refused to leave the locker room, so Gilling told his team to follow him back to the hotel while Ball’s sons, LiAngelo and LaMelo, stayed behind.

When the Chino Hills team made it back to their hotel, Ball still hadn’t cooled down. In fact, he was just getting started.

“An assistant coach comes up to me and tells me that he sees LaVar rallying the team up,” Gilling said. “I guess he got them out of their rooms on the 18th floor and tells the team that it was his system that won. That we’re doing what he says. ‘I run Chino Hills! I run UCLA, about to run the NBA!’

“He pretty much downplays me at the same time. My assistant coach sees him and says to him, ‘That’s not right. Is there any middle ground?’ He says, ‘No, there’s no middle ground.’”

This was the moment Gilling’s relationship with Ball changed for the worse, leaving the Chino Hills basketball team caught right in the middle of the season-long feud.”

Gilling hasn’t addressed the media at the time of me writing this, but did take to Twitter to wish his former team nothing but the best going forward.