NBA exclusive: Zach LaVine talks New Balance, Russell Westbrook, baseball, bounce-back season appeared first on ClutchPoints. Add ClutchPoints as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
BOSTON — Zach LaVine is entering his 13th year in the NBA this season, and the Sacramento Kings guard believes he has something to prove after an injury-riddled 2025-26 campaign.
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LaVine averaged 23.3 points 4.3 rebounds, and 4.2 assists in the 2024-25 season that saw him traded from the Chicago Bulls to the Kings mid-season. But a hand injury and positioning for a lottery pick limited him to just 39 total games last year. Now, the 32-year old is eyeing a bounce back season with the Kings.
Before he gets the new season started, however, Zach LaVine took time this summer to join fellow New Balance athletes in the brand’s Beantown Elite Experience in Boston, Massachusetts.
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The Beantown Elite Experience, now in it’s second year, is New Balance’s four-day high school basketball camp in the Northeast where the top-ranked male and female high school players travel in to learn from some of the very best in the business inside The TRACK at New Balance. LaVine was joined Tyrese Maxey, Darius Garland, Dejounte Murray, and agent Rich Paul, and the group participated in on-court drills as well as off-court seminars breaking down the business of basketball.
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LaVine is entering his fifth year with the brand that has made swift noise with their new and improved basketball sneakers.
“It’s been great, man, I’ve been with them for five years now,” LaVine told ClutchPoints. “They’re a great partner. We were very aligned and the same ideas. When I started out with New Balance, you could see the growth in the game. You can see the growth in the culture. We’re adding more and more guys, very high-level guys, obviously. So, New Balance has been killing it. You’ve got to give your hat off to Chris Davis for setting the plan in motion and then being able to have all the collective group take over and they let us have our personalities well here too. So, it’s fun.”
Zach LaVine sat down with ClutchPoints at the Beantown Elite Experience in Boston for an exclusive interview into the camp, his relationship with New Balance, the upcoming NBA season, playing with Russell Westbrook, and more.
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Tomer Azarly: Here with Zach LaVine in Boston for the Beantown Elite Experience. First of all, I want to ask you about your partnership with New Balance. What’s that been like? You’ve been together for a few years now. What have they been like as a partner, as a brand alongside you?
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Zach LaVine: It’s been great, man. I’ve been with them for, I think, five years now. And great partner. We were very aligned and the same ideas. When I started out with New Balance, you could see the growth in the game. You can see the growth in the culture. We’re adding more and more guys, very high-level guys, obviously. So, New Balance has been killing it. You’ve got to give your hat off to Chris Davis for setting the plan in motion and then being able to have all the collective group take over and they let us have our personalities well here too. So, it’s fun.
Tomer Azarly: Talk to me about being here at this camp though, with the campers, the kids here. Obviously, trying to soak in knowledge, you’re trying to impart your knowledge on them. What’s that been like? Have they been the sponges that you kind of hope they would be? And what’s it like for you giving that knowledge to them?
Zach LaVine: It’s really cool. Honestly, I wasn’t able to make it last year, but the kids are great. They ask questions. They listen. There hasn’t been a lot of like guys talking in the background while the NBA players are talking, even the coaches. So, and they’re going out there competing. I think that’s the biggest thing that I like seeing from dudes this age where at the end of the day, we’re basketball players. We’re here to compete. We’re here to push each other and it’s been good.
Tomer Azarly: Now, a lot of the sentiment echoed from some of the guys like Tyrese, Darius, and DeJounte, New Balance has been more than a partner, more than a brand. They’ve been a partner for years. What have they been like to you working alongside you, visiting you throughout the season and the communication alongside that?
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Zach LaVine: Yeah, it’s definitely more of a partnership and a friendship. It’s not contractual is what I would say. It’s very, we get good conversations, we get to ask them things and we work on different projects that we like for each other.
Tomer Azarly: Talk to me about your favorite shoe at New Balance so far. What are some of the ones that you like? What are you rocking right now? What do you like wearing?
Zach LaVine: These are the new AC Runners. I like these a lot. I actually, when I first got them, I didn’t know what they were, but these are, these are really comfortable. I like the 2002R’s, obviously the Fresh Foam BB’s and all the V2s, V3s that I’ve hooped in over the last three or four years. The 550 is a classic, the low top ones, you get to keep an all white pair of those. Shoot, what else do I got? The trainers, the 1906R’s, I think those are really nice. And there’s so many, they give us so much stuff and we’re able to customize them and they get us all the new drops. It’s fun.
Tomer Azarly: Are you a guy who likes to wear like one basketball shoe for like the season?
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Zach LaVine: No, I wear a different pair every game.
Tomer Azarly: Every game?
Zach LaVine: Yeah. When I first started with them too, I was getting, I had like four pairs and I was like, I need one for every game.
Tomer Azarly: Now, I looked it up. You’re entering year 13 in the NBA. That’s the, that’s a big milestone. Did you think that you’d make it 13 years in the NBA?
Zach LaVine: Yeah. I put the work in for it, so I better have. I think I got a lot more too.
Tomer Azarly: A lot of guys don’t make it past a couple years, so it’s like it’s almost a blessing to make it this far.
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Zach LaVine: No, it is definitely a blessing. I think it’s just a credit to the hard work and, it’s a certain mindset. I know the lifespan of NBA player, a regular one is four years. I’ve been blessed to be in my third contract going into my fourth and being able to have these different experiences, success, ups and downs, but that’s part of the journey. You play the cards you’re dealt, you lay your hand out there, and you see what you’ve got.
Tomer Azarly: I know you dealt with some injuries last year. What can we kind of expect out of Zach LaVine this year?
Zach LaVine: I had a little hand injury, but every year for me, I go into the offseason, I see what I can do better. I see how I can try to help the team and what what role or what area I’m gonna be fitting in. Obviously, they going to put you in a role that’s best case for you. But I’m super excited. It’s unfortunate that I had the injury last year, even the season we had, we started off very well. I started off well. But for standards for myself, I have them extremely high so I’m looking forward to this year.
Tomer Azarly: Do you feel like you have anything to prove at this point in your career?
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Zach LaVine: Yeah. I think if you don’t have something to prove to yourself or anybody, you’re being very complacent. I think I’m my biggest critic. So if anything, I have something to prove myself every year.
Tomer Azarly: I didn’t know this until recently. Your brother-in-law is Blake Snell. Yeah. What’s it like having another athlete, high-level athlete in the family?
Zach LaVine: Yeah. My wife’s sister married Blake and we’ve known each other for a while. He’s from Seattle. It’s dope, man. I get to go to baseball games. I get to live out my passion. I thought I was going to be a baseball player growing up. So having him being able to come to basketball games, I go to baseball games. It’s really cool to have someone like that understands it at the highest level, just in a different sport. So it’s really cool.
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Tomer Azarly: I know you grew up playing baseball. Did you ever think about what it would have been like if you didn’t go to basketball, maybe stuck with baseball?
Zach LaVine: Yeah, I thought I was going to be centerfielder for the Angels instead of Mike Trout. So me and Trout are real close, but no. I picked the right sport. Now, obviously, I go and I still go hit in the cage. I do batting practice and do all that stuff and try to live out a dream. But I’m living my dream every day.
Tomer Azarly: You got to play with Russell Westbrook last year. He called it a career right now. What was it like playing with him? And what did you think of his career as a whole, someone who appears universally loved in the basketball world?
Zach LaVine: Russ is one of the best humans I’ve met. On the court, off the court. The dude has an energy like you’ve never seen before and I played against him. I came to the league in 2014, a couple years later, I think he won MVP. It was hell trying to guard him when I was younger, especially when I was 19, 20 years old and he’s going straight downhill at you. We’ve had plenty of conversations and we’ve worked out together and played. But Russ is one of my good friends. My hat’s off to him for a hell of a career. He had a lot more to give to basketball too. He could have kept playing, but I’m glad that he that he walked away on his own terms because not everybody gets to do that.
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Check out ClutchPoints’ exclusive interview with Dejounte Murray here, and be on the lookout for exclusive interviews with more stars next week.
Related: Exclusive: Zach LaVine tips hat to Russell Westbrook, calls him ‘one of the best humans I’ve met’
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