Are the Charlotte Hornets going to waste the best years of NBA All-Star LaMelo Ball?
.JPG "Charlotte Hornets guard LaMelo Ball makes a point to an official against the Miami Heat on Thursday. Ball is scheduled to play in his first NBA All-Star Game Sunday night and then will return home to a Charlotte team that has gone 1-9 in its past 10 games.")
LaMelo Ball will play in the first of what will be many NBA All-Star games for him in Cleveland on Sunday night and, of course, he’s going to do something dazzling.
“I hope the people get to see the crazy stuff that he does in our games,” Charlotte Hornets teammate Miles Bridges said. “He does a lot of flashy passes, a lot of highlight plays. It’s perfect for the All-Star Game.”
That’s true. But after a weekend on the national stage, Ball will return home to a Charlotte team in disarray. The Hornets have gone 1-9 in their past 10 games. They have thudded down to ninth place in the Eastern Conference. At this rate, they are in serious danger of dropping out of even the “play-in” option (teams 7 through 10) for the NBA playoffs.
Nevertheless, Ball has been a meteor. He belongs in this All-Star Game, because he’s now one of the best 24 players in the world.
“He makes us different,” Hornets coach James Borrego likes to say of Ball.
Only 20, the 6-foot-7 point guard has improved in almost every way you would hope in his second NBA season. He is the biggest reason why the Hornets enter the All-Star break as the NBA’s No. 1 offense, at 113.8 points per game.
And yet the Hornets also enter this break two games below .500, at 29-31. They were 28-22 on Jan. 28, but since then they’ve dropped like a stone thanks to a combination of factors. Glue guy Gordon Hayward is hurt — again — and so are a couple other rotational players. They could have won either of the past two games by making 2 of 2 free throws in the final seconds, but in both cases missed one (Bridges one day, Montrezl Harrell the other). They haven’t come through often enough in the clutch all season and are now 0-6 in overtime games.
All of that brings us to this point: The Hornets are either not going to make the playoffs in 2022, or if they do squeeze into them, they aren’t going to go very far. Too many holes.
So are they going to waste the LaMelo Ball years?
It’s a real issue. Yes, Ball is only 20, he’s got a lot of years left, and he’s not going anywhere anytime soon. The earliest he could leave Charlotte would be 2024, and even then he’s a restricted free agent and the Hornets would surely match any offer he received.
But for years the Hornets wanted a franchise player who you could theoretically build a championship team around. Kemba Walker was a three-time All-Star in Charlotte, as well as a world-class human being and a better pure scorer than Ball. But he wasn’t quite that. The Hornets haven’t really had that since the early 1990s, when Alonzo Mourning was glowering in the paint, Muggsy Bogues was leading the fast break and Larry Johnson was a dunking Grandmama.
Ball is a transformative player, and yet the Hornets haven’t totally transformed. They were a disappointing team that finished under .500 in the four seasons right before he got here, and they are 62-70 in the 132 games since he got here.
There’s still time, of course. First, though, Ball has to light up this All-Star Game. What are his goals?
They sounded pretty modest. Said Ball to reporters in Cleveland: “Just pretty much stay safe. Stay out of the cold. Don’t get sick.” He also promised to “put on a show.”
Borrego said he hopes Ball enjoys the experience, but also that he learns something. His advice to Ball before he hopped on the plane to Cleveland?
“Just absorb the greatness around him as well,” Borrego said. “Talk to a few of these players and pick their brains. Use it as a wisdom class. Go in there and dig out some information: How to get better as a player. What does winning look like? What does greatness look like? I hope he asks those questions.”
Ball certainly could use those lessons. As good as he already is, he doesn’t always make the right play at the end of games. He fouled out in the double-overtime loss to Miami on Thursday night at a critical moment. That was a problem, because the Hornets are invariably a better team when Ball is on the floor.
Having Ball and his 20 points, 7.1 rebounds and 7.5 assists per game hasn’t been enough this year, which makes you wonder. Is Borrego the problem? Is it the lackadaisical defense in the paint? Is Hayward’s contract going to be the albatross that Nic Batum’s turned into?
The situation has a strong similarity to Cam Newton’s first two years in Charlotte, in 2011 and 2012. Everyone could see how good Newton was, but he still made some mistakes and the Carolina Panthers didn’t put enough talent around him to overcome those. They went 6-10 and 7-9 in those seasons before turning a corner and making the playoffs the next three years in a row.
The Hornets have that capability. But they’ve suddenly forgotten how to finish games.
Said Charlotte’s Kelly Oubre Jr. after the Miami loss Thursday, which was the Hornets’ seventh straight defeat at home: “The way we are right now, we’re in a place of confusion a little bit at times during the game. More veteran teams come in and capitalize on that.”
Yes, they do. Charlotte has 22 games left to right the ship once Ball returns home from his high-profile All-Star break, and then an offseason to get better. They need to. He’s the player the Hornets — and their fans — dreamed of for years.
Don’t waste him.
This story was originally published February 20, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
