As the Charlotte Hornets once again sit near the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings, LaMelo Ball’s future with the organization is becoming less certain. <\/p>\n
On the latest episode of The Hoop Collective podcast (starts at 4:25 mark), ESPN’s Brian Windhorst expressed skepticism that there would be a “humongous market” for Ball in a trade. <\/p>\n
This comes on the heels of Yahoo Sports’\u00a0Kelly Iko reporting<\/a> on Thursday that Ball has “grown increasingly frustrated with the organization and is open to a trade away from the franchise.”<\/p>\n Ball seemed to dispute Iko’s report by posting a clown emoji on X. <\/p>\n There are several reasons that teams would be hesitant to add Ball right now. One of the biggest, as Windhorst noted, is his lack of availability. <\/p>\n Ball has already missed six of Charlotte’s first 15 games this season. He was unavailable for 145 out of a possible 246 games in the previous three seasons. His only season with more than 51 games played was during the 2021-22 campaign (75 starts). <\/p>\n In addition to Ball’s extensive injury history, he is still owed a lot of money on his current contract. The 24-year-old is in the second season of a five-year, $203.9 million<\/a> extension signed in July 2023. <\/p>\n Ball has also been criticized<\/a> throughout his career for his lack of defensive impact. Hornets head coach Charles Lee even said<\/a> early last season that his staff was going challenge him to improve on that end of the court. <\/p>\n Lee kept Ball on the bench for the final 4:32 of regulation in Wednesday’s 127-119 loss to the Indiana Pacers. He finished with 18 points on 5-of-21 shooting with nine assists and six turnovers in 27 minutes. <\/p>\n As an offensive player, Ball has shown a lot of skill that could be harnessed in the right situation. He is currently averaging at least 20 points and 7.0 assists per game for the fifth consecutive season. <\/p>\n Ball’s efficiency isn’t what it once was, as he’s currently shooting a career-low 38.5 percent overall and 29.8 percent from three on 9.3 attempts per game. <\/p>\n The Hornets need to find a long-term direction in the midst of what is shaping up to be another lost season. They have lost seven of their last eight games, dropping to 4-11 overall. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the Charlotte Hornets once again sit near the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings, LaMelo Ball’s future…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-299776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}