It’s madness. Lavar Ball continues to make headlines, and presumably will do so into the future.

For talking.

He is seeking a $1 billion shoe deal for his three sons. He wants to play both Barkley and Jordan one-on-one, though I am sure if you asked if he could beat them at the same time he wouldn’t blink.

Is he confident or arrogant? Is he prideful or truthful? Does he really care about his sons or is it all about him?

He has enough “tape” out there that USA Today ranked his top 10 most absurd comments.

He continues to play the game with the media—and with us. And he is winning. He is winning because we are talking about him. In the midst of perhaps the greatest month of sports of the calendar year, we are talking and debating about the father of a college basketball player.

Christians should take notice.

Not for the pride or overconfidence.

Not for the content coming out of his mouth.

But the strategy of straying from the cultural norm.

Ball is proving that when you stand out from everyone else, people notice. Entrenched in a “you do you” culture, we would do well to follow a similar strategy of being different.

It’s one of the reasons God implored Israel to obey His commands upon entering the Promised Land.

In regards to God’s laws, the Israelites were commanded to:

“Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’”

When our words and lifestyles align with God’s, we will no doubt look different. And people will notice.

Those viewers who watched the South Carolina/Baylor game through the end saw this first hand. Both teams linked arms together with heads bowed and offered up a final prayer before the teams parted ways.

This happens often at the end of football games. But not after basketball games. It was different and the media didn't know how to respond.

Postgame for South Carolina and Baylor pic.twitter.com/FcJSo0F7PL

— Joe Fleming (@ByJoeFleming) March 25, 2017

As Ed Uszynski noted in another piece on the AIA website, “If this had been TBN instead of TBS, perhaps we could have absorbed a longer view of this rare occurrence and been able to appreciate the moment with Lundquist and Spanarkel who were properly silent—even reverent?—given the unexpectedness of the gesture.”

When our words and actions go against the grain, regardless of our motives, people will pay attention. How we steward that attention by directing people toward righteousness or unrighteousness always remains to be seen.

Our cultural moment presents an abundance of narratives, yet very few of those represent a truly unique story—a story that stands in stark contrast to the rest. But in a cliche-quote media culture, Ball’s antics will continue to make headlines for their relative uniqueness.

In a recent appearance on ESPN First Take showed a man drenched in confidence. He refused to back down to his absurd claim that he would defeat Michael Jordan in a game of one on one.

If Jordan ever accepted his challenge—and it would not shock me if he is considering it—Lavar Ball would ABSOLUTELY win.

Let me clarify. He would lose the one-on-one battle. He may not even score a single point. Like the internet always does, it brought video evidence to the conversation.

The verdict: Lavar Ball is not good at basketball.

At all.

He will lose the one-on-one game everyone is watching. Yet, he may just win the game he seems to care most about: getting his sons a $1 billion dollar shoe deal and making sure they stay in the news regardless of how they play.

Winning by losing. Funny, in a strange parallel a man out of Nazareth tried a similar strategy over 2,000 years ago, with far different motives and outcomes than this basketball dad’s today.