Hornets’ LaMelo Ball, Gordon Hayward couldn’t be more different, but they’re thriving
.JPG "Charlotte Hornets forward Gordon Hayward (20) congratulates guard LaMelo Ball (2) Sunday. The two combined for 44 points in the Hornets’ 119-97 win over the Washington Wizards.")
They are the Charlotte Hornets’ yin and yang — the team’s two most purely talented players, and its two most different.
Gordon Hayward can play an entire game perfectly, as he came close to doing again Sunday afternoon in Charlotte’s blowout 119-97 win over the Washington Wizards. And afterward, you may have a hard time remembering anything Hayward did. His play is an exercise in understated grace.
LaMelo Ball, on the other hand, does something memorable every five minutes. His entire game appears to be an audition for “SportsCenter,” and if you’ve watched ESPN’s signature sports show lately, you know it is a largely successful one.
There’s a little bit of a “The tortoise and the hare” quality to all of this. Hayward can certainly run when he wants to, but he also has a little bit of “an old-man game” to him, as Hornets coach James Borrego said Sunday.
As for Ball, Borrego said he’s in “two-minute drill” mode at all times — a theme the coach pushed hard in the preseason, as he tried to make the Hornets understand that pressuring the other team’s defense with urgency was essential.
Ball is a perfect guy for that. It’s hard to take your eyes off him even when he’s dribbling 60 feet from the basket — there’s always the possibility he might do something remarkable. When the fans finally get to come back into the Spectrum Center again, they are going to love him in the same sort of joyous way they loved Larry Johnson during his years in Charlotte.
Hayward had a quiet 25 points in 30 minutes Sunday for Charlotte (11-13). He also got to the free-throw line 10 times, which is always a good sign that he’s playing aggressively.
Ball had 19 points, seven rebounds and five assists, several of the dazzling variety. He also tried something I’ve never seen before — a hesitation, double-fake, 360-spin into a no-look layup in the lane.
Both Ball and the ball were thoroughly stuffed on that ill-advised move, and Ball got into such a big collision on the play that he literally lost a shoe while Washington went the other way. The rookie didn’t care. He threw the shoe back on and kept playing.
Of the two players’ contrasting styles, Borrego said: “The game feels a little bit slower for Gordon. He plays at a different pace. You can’t speed him up (as a defender). Melo puts pressure on teams. ... He’s always in that two-minute drill. … I think it’s a really good combination.”
Good NBA teams need contrasts like that. The last time the Hornets had a duo playing the same way, Al Jefferson was the fundamentally sound big guy and Kemba Walker was the flashy point guard in the mid-2010s.
The comparison is imperfect. Hayward can get up the floor a lot better than “Big Al” could at that point in his career and gets a lot of his points outside rather than in the post. Ball is a half-foot taller than Walker was and throws passes at different angles because of it. But the contrast was largely the same and caused defenses the same sort of problems.
Hayward is 30 years old, an 11-year NBA veteran who is married and a father of four. His path to the NBA came via a traditional college route, where he was an engineering major at Butler. Ball is 19 years old, single and groomed to play basketball almost from birth in a celebrity family. He skipped the latter part of high school to play pro basketball in Lithuania and Australia.
The two have been complimentary of each other but don’t appear to have a lot outwardly in common besides the fact that they are both in their first NBA season in Charlotte, having joined a team that desperately needed their firepower.
Ball, the No. 3 overall pick in the 2020 NBA draft, does some things already that Hayward just can’t do. And he has only one total turnover in the past two games, which is terrific.
Hayward, the Hornet’s big-ticket free agent, remains the team’s best scorer in the halfcourt and the one who bails the team out of a lot of bad possessions with three seconds left on the shot clock.
As they learn to play together more, these Hornets could become dangerous.
