Here is a positive refreshing break from the nuttiness of Armstrongism.
Ellis LaRavia's grandson, Jake LaRavia is slated to be a first-round draft pick for the National Basketball Association during its draft day on June 23rd, 2022.Ellis LaRavia who passed away in 2020 at the age of 89, served in many capacities over the decades including being Pasadena Facilities Manager, the Director of the Ambassador Auditorium overseeing its day-to-day operations and staff, he also was the Vice-president of the Ambassador International Cultural Foundation and was ordained an evangelist in Tucson, Arizona in 1979. He served on Herbert Armstrong's "Council of Elders". At his passing, he was associated with the United Church of God.
LaRavia worked out with the Heat earlier this week and has been working out with teams in the 20-30 range, per HHH’s own Matt Pineda. He has risen on the draft boards from an undrafted player preseason to a possible first-round pick now. Teams are noticing what he brings to the table and the consistency at which he does it. Pineda was told that the workout went really well.
LaRavia may not be the most explosive athlete in the world, but the Heat have done a more than fine getting the most physically of previous players. He’s a polished two-level scorer with defensive and playmaking upside. LaRavia, 20, would theoretically fill the need as a backup-4 and could contribute right away. He should be a player the Miami Heat braintrust target if he falls.
Hat tip to a reader...
This is cool! I will have to keep an eye on him.
ReplyDeleteI hope he sticks to his dreams and doesn't fall back to the absurd Sabbath teaching of the church to not play sports on Friday nights or Saturdays.
Christ is Lord of the Sabbath. It’s the biblical day to worship your Creator
ReplyDeleteBrady Manek had family from Oklahoma in the church too. He could be drafted first round as well altho a little less likely. I was best man in his cousins wedding and played ball with another of his cousins in college.
ReplyDeleteWell he is still a deacon.
ReplyDeleteHim passing away while associated with the UCG raised my eyebrows. Perhaps it's only because of family ties. but the eternal fate of anyone who passes away in that church is a big question mark.
ReplyDeleteI hope he doesn't let the church destroy his dreams! Searching information on him I do not see where he has refused to play on Fridays or Saturdays. Thats a good thing.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
ReplyDeleteHim passing away while associated with the UCG raised my eyebrows. Perhaps it's only because of family ties. but the eternal fate of anyone who passes away in that church is a big question mark.
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You're eyebrows need to calm down and get over the concept that you can know such a thing or need to speculate on it.
Dennis, notice how you are trying to control my mental processes. Ah, the WWCG culture.
DeleteI will do with my eyebrows as I please.
Young Mr. LaRavia is only a junior in college. I hope the NBA neglects him this year, so he can finish his degree and have a better foundation for career success. He grew up in a church that didn't seriously teach young people to prepare for their long-term future, so it's sad to see that even if he has rejected the old doctrines he has retained the short-sighted vision that so many other young people learned from the church.
ReplyDeleteWow....for somebody who values education such a terribly uneducated take.
DeleteIf Jake gets drafted in the back half of the 1st round this year he gets about 4 -10 million guaranteed. Thats before we even talk about the endorsements and lifetime of oppurtunities that will come from being a 1st round draft pick and the 4 years in the NBA that his gauranteed contract would mean. After that even if he didnt get another contract in the NBA the visibility those 4 years would give him he could then easily parlay that to multi more million overseas pursuing his basketball career there. As a business decision it is universally understood that its a horrible idea to go back to school and "finish his degree" when the NBA beckons. There was a couple examples of guys who did this thru the years and had career ending injury or fell off and lost their draft stock the next year. Some then even went undrafted. You can be sure their degree wasnt much salve for the millions they had lost with that decision.
Further... if he does get a second and third contract in the NBA that contract could be much larger. Good players can make upwards of 30-40 million or more a year. Leaving early gives you an additional year to make that kind of dough before father time eventually catches up to you. Not smart to lose a year on the back end of that oppurtunity by giving a year up on the front. Guys who go all 4 years to college are often making a couple million per year on their rookie deals when guys who came out early the same age are already on deals at 20-40 million.
At this point basketball is his career and what your advocating could cost him 40-50 million cash. Thats the way he looks at it. Now after his playing career is over, like so many other NBA players have done he can take those multi millions of dollars he earns playing the game he loves and go back and get his degree in his 30s....OR.... he can retire a multi millionaire offering his entire family generational wealth..
About the worst thing he or anybody who cares about him could possibly hope for right now is that he gets 'neglected".
Anon 653,
ReplyDeleteOne year in the nba as a first round pick is worth more than he would make with his college degree throughout his career. Invest 1.5 million at average of 8% is a minimum of 120k/year not including compounding.
LaRavia has an unfair advantage over the other players on his Wake Forest "Demon Deacons" team. LaRavia grew up surrounded by demon deacons for most of his life!
ReplyDeleteAnon 7:38 AM, it is very optimistic of you, but awfully naive, to think that a kid who didn't even finish college will have the wisdom and maturity to save most of his salary for investing. Very few NBA players do that. Many spend two or three years in the NBA, then within a decade are broke again and have to work as assistant coaches for low five-figure salaries.
ReplyDeleteBut I hope you are correct.
Its clear you dont know many asst coaches in college and the NBA. They dont do it for the money I assure you. Its their dream job lol
DeleteEither way your encouraging him to gamble millions of dollars and potentially generational wealth for a piece of paper that might get him a job at starbucks these days.
The idea that extra year makes any difference to whether he "blows his millions" is equally shocking to propose. He has a strong family and is about the last example of a kid who gets rich and would blow it. Just a bad take sir
He is who he is and is making a choice in the present. If he is currently the type to throw money away, i doubt two years in college will change that. However, two additional years in the NBA will give him a $4M buffer and would get him two years closer to his next contract which will be substantially larger than his rookie contract. Leaving now is really valued at the last two years of his career. If he makes it for several years, the decision he is making now could easily put $10M more in his pocket. If he becomes a starter at least $18M over two years.
ReplyDeleteYou strike when the iron is hot as a professional athlete. He’ll hire someone to manage his funds and then still have a couple hundred grand to blow while still putting away $1.5M after taxes as a 20-21 year old. Not a bad start…
It is truly saddening to see all the nasty comments from some here that have to denigrate Jake. Why cannot people celebrate his accomplishments? This is one of the main reasons I left the church. No one ever appreciated anything that others accomplished.
ReplyDeleteI wish Jake great success as he works on his passion to excel.
Anon 10:42
ReplyDeleteWhat you have seen here is just the tip of the iceberg. Many I have not let through are far worse than anything here.
So much for the positive refreshing break from the nuttiness of Armstrongism right? Thanks for not letting them thru. This is a wonderful story. I went to school with his parents. Its a fine family Im sure
DeleteNO2HWA, surely you know the old saying: "It is not enough that I succeed. Others must fail."
ReplyDeleteHow many ambitious young men have you met in the ACOGs who fit that saying? Compare that to how few echo what John the Baptizer says in John 3:30: "He must increase, but I must decrease."
10:42, You should have been around when Sam Kitchen's athletic shoes were featured!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous June 16 7:34:00 PM said, "I hope he sticks to his dreams and doesn't fall back to the absurd Sabbath teaching of the church to not play sports on Friday nights or Saturdays."
ReplyDeleteMY COMMENT - I don't know anything about LaRavia's grandson and/or whether he grew-up and stayed in an Armstrongite Church. But the only other person I can think of with a WCG background who made it to the Major Leagues was the original "Sundown Kid"- Milwaukee Brewers Danny Thomas. It didn't end well for him and ultimately was a thrown away draft choice for the Brewers. The Brewers simply couldn't have a roster spot occupied by someone who wasn't available to play 2 days a week (Friday night/Saturday). After his release from the Brewers, his life spiraled down.
From Wikipedia: Danny Lee Thomas (May 9, 1951 – June 12, 1980) was a Major League Baseball player who played for the Milwaukee Brewers in late 1976 and early 1977. During his brief major league career, he became known as the "Sundown Kid" because of his well-publicized refusal to play on seventh-day Sabbath.
While in jail on the rape charge, Thomas committed suicide by hanging on June 12, 1980.[23][25] His family was so impoverished by then that they were unable to afford funeral expenses or even remain in Alabama for his potter's field burial.[23] After the outfielder's death, sports columnist John Blanchette of the Spokane Spokesman-Review described him as a "troubled soul," saying, "no one was more haunted than Danny Thomas."[10]
Richard
Curiously , the team nickname for Wake Forest is "Demon Deacons" !
ReplyDeleteUntil the 1920s they were known as the Baptists when a school reporter gave the football team the nickname 'Demon Deacons' after a 'devilish' win over the Trinity Blue Devils-now known as the Duke Blue Devils."
Whats fantastic about this story is that his parents obviously let him chart his own way and the kid is going to play in the NBA because of that choice. Just so happy for him. I would have given anything for that oppurtunity myself at his age. For me thats the takeaway if you want to make it about his grandpa.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter plays Division I college golf and as a dad Im very proud that shes getting those oppurtunites I never had. Its wonderful this movement always had a horrible virus. The virus is called 2nd gen Armstrongites. They almost universally said the hell with this thing. We have proven to be deadly.
Thanks, Sundown. Nice to have someone around with the knowledge to help us past the cliches.
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ReplyDeleteThe Sundown Kid said: "I would have given anything for that opportunity myself at his age"
That was my opportunity Sundown. Growing up, all I did was play sports. Three hours a night during school, eight to ten hours a day on the weekends and all day everyday during the summer. The professional ranks was my conclusion period!
That conclusion and with it all the hard work and the honing of the craft was abandoned so I could proverbially go and follow a 92 year old man at 18 years of age.
Reality is watching your friends obtain scholarships to prestigious division 1 schools and watching some of them ascend to the pro ranks.
One of those individuals recently reached out to my brother through social media and asked, "what ever happened to your brother, he was one hell of a ballplayer - it was like he disappeared"? I asked my brother, did you tell him the story or did you tell him the REAL story.
In hindsight, I wouldn't trade that 18 year old self decision for anything. I was able to fully embrace the blessed hope presented to me. Taking part in playing the foil against those that perpetrate the unfruitful works of darkness is quite the sport. So I have gained far far more than being some broken down forgotten former professional athlete.
Sundown, what you or I "would have given" ultimately isn't what can be gotten, unless a journey is better than the destination.
I suppose we've all got our ACOG stories. I played playground or sand lot baseball, football, and basketball, but in high school there were sabbath problems preventing me from participating in those sports. Still, I was athletic, and wanted to participate in sports. The only sport which did not have games or meets in the sabbath were indoor track, and outdoor track. The track coach actually recruited me. He said that I seemed to be one of the few students who seemed "alive" in the school and invited me to try out. I ended up being good in endurance runs, and became one of our team's two milers.
ReplyDeleteAthletics accomplished several of my goals. In my era, as a WCG young person, you got spanked every day of your life right up until the day you left for Ambassador College. So, one of my goals in being involved in athletics was to cut down on the spanking quota by having more time away from the fanatical parental savages. There were hours of practice, and the meets, and my program was every bit as effective as I had hoped it would be. It also helped me in dissipating the extreme anger caused by my family "situation". Secondly, I wanted to be seen by my peers (and the girls!!!) as just a regular, well adjusted guy, not a pariah. Being an athlete provided more friends, making me more acceptable, and helping me blend in socially. Also, the feasts and church activities occasionally presented some, uh, academic challenges. In my school, if you were out for sports, the teachers made grading decisions in your favor in their judgment calls. So being involved with sports helped cancel out and neutralize or minimize several of the very negative factors in growing up in HWA's church
The big thing, however, ended up being long term health benefits, because I never really stopped training. I was still running about five miles a day at local high school tracks after work each day right up until I turned 55. And lifting weights, bulking up with creatine and also using glutamine. I had to switch to bicycling at that point because the shock of running became too much for my knees and lower back. I also still do weight training.
So far as the precious "truths" we supposedly got to know as part of the WCG, the proof of the pudding was 1975 for me. You don't get three strikes in which to coerce and modify and manipulate peoples lives in all the ways that 1975 did. It is one strike and you are out! There is no way that God would have allowed HWA to be wrong about such a huge thing as that if He had been truly working with him. Keeping the sabbath, the holy days, clean meats, and tithing were supposed to be the practices of a leader and church that made people "God's people" to whom God would reveal the meanings of the end times prophecies. Armstrongism ran aground in 1975 and has been floundering about for decades now. I'm so glad that I made an intelligent decision in 1975. It's been a pretty good life full of amazing experiences.
Good for you anon 11:24! I wish I had left earlier. I missed some opportunities and didn’t go into a career field most suitable for me, but the Lord has allowed for blessings and I am where He brought me.
ReplyDelete11.24 AM
ReplyDeleteYour post raises the question of how many people did Herbie cause to spiritually stumble and turn their back on God due to the 1975 fiasco? And yet many still venerate the man. I would hate to be him come judgement day.
When the choice is between religion and millions of dollars, the millions of dollars seem to get chosen every time.
ReplyDeleteHe is a very religious young man who conducts Bible studies with teammates and classmates. He recognizes the platform he has as an nba player and hopes to show more people how they can put on Christ.
DeleteDrafted with the 19th pick to Minnesota and then traded to the Memphis Girzzlies!! Thats going to be a guaranteed 7.3 million for his first 3 years with an extremely likely 4th year option that should get him roughly another 4 mil. After that the skys the limit. Good for you Jake!!
ReplyDeleteAs Jake laravia cousin I can say truthfully that he was never in the Church of God going to church on Sundays he was raised in a different light of Christianity just the way it is and has nothing to do with my grandfather Ellis who was a saint and nothing less than that.
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