LAS VEGAS -- For the second consecutive week, LaVar Ball's summer basketball team did not finish a game it started. And for the second time this year, LaVar Ball has publicly told a woman to "stay in her lane."
Ball threatened to take his team off the floor and leave the Cashman Center after he was assessed a technical foul Friday during the first half of his team's game vs. Team BBC in pool play at the Adidas Summer Championships. Play was halted for more than 10 minutes, with an unusual scene that unfolded thereafter: a docuseries crew was on the court, capturing video and audio, as Adidas representatives, coaches and officials worked on a resolution to Ball's threat.
Ball sat next to his son, Lonzo, as the ordeal was sorted out.
Major stall in the Big Ballers' game. Docuseries crew on floor, LaVar waiting, watching--after he again tried to take his team off the floor pic.twitter.com/0PxnHKD9Oe
— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) July 28, 2017
The first technical foul of Friday morning's game was delivered by a female referee. LaVar Ball then demanded she be replaced immediately -- or else his team would leave. Ball instructed his players to pick up their bags and go, but they did not wind up leaving the court. Eventually, Adidas decided to replace the referee -- a NCAA Division I women's basketball official -- with someone else.
The official was visibly upset after being taken off the floor. She was not permitted to comment.
"This was not our decision," Ed Rush, who runs Court Club Elite, the independent officiating body that works the Adidas event, told CBS Sports.
"She's extremely competent as a person," Rush said of the official, whose name was not disclosed by tournament officials. "She's a very well-respected person. She's very serious about officiating."
After a new official was brought in, LaVar Ball received another technical foul late in the first half -- earning him an automatic ejection. When he refused to leave the court, the game was called by Adidas officials with a little more than two minutes remaining and the score 53-43 in favor of Team BBC, which hails from Maryland. Big Baller Brand was given a loss.
"We don't want to be the show," said Rush, a former NBA referee. "We teach people to respond. Nobody initiates."
Afterward, Ball told ESPN that the female official needs to "stay in her lane" and claimed she had a "vendetta" against him.
Chris Rivers, Adidas' director of global basketball sports marketing, made the decision to initially keep the game going -- and then to call it after Ball's second confrontation with a separate official.
"I don't even look as gender as an issue," Rivers said. "I guarantee he's had issues with officials of every color, gender, height, weight — as have all of our coaches who lose games this week."
Court Club Elite is the company that trains and supplies officials for the Adidas Summer Championships, and has for a decade. Court Club officials speaking on the condition of anonymity told CBS Sports that it was the third consecutive game at the Adidas event in which Ball's in-game behavior was over the line. Thursday afternoon, a young official who worked Big Baller Brand's game was too intimidated to give Ball a technical foul that he should have been assessed.
"The kid was scared sh--less to give him a technical foul," the source said.
Rush had two senior members of his staff, including an NBA official, watching Friday morning's game to track referee performance. (Many officials who work these tournaments are trying to become college-level officials, while some others already are.) Rush said his observers on site deemed the technical fouls assessed to Ball as legitimate.
"We bent more than we normally do," Rush said of the ref swap.
Ball's team is scheduled to play in bracket competition at 8 p.m. PT Friday.