a Yahoo! Sports report that was published Thursday<\/a>. The report also said that the Hornets\u2019 front office has become disillusioned with the 24-year-old and is open to moving him.<\/p>\nBall, 24, was drafted in 2020 third overall by the Hornets, and the team has not qualified for the playoffs in any of his five full seasons. During the 2021-22 season, Charlotte posted a 43-39 record but lost in an Eastern Conference Play-In Tournament game. Since the start of the 2022-23 season, the Hornets have amassed a 71-190 record, including a 4-11 record this season.<\/p>\n
Because of injuries, Ball has not played more than 47 games in any of the Hornets\u2019 last three full seasons.<\/p>\n
Asked if he\u2019s \u201ccontent\u201d with the Hornets, Ball answered, \u201cYeah, I love being here. I ain\u2019t saying nothing. I\u2019m just trying to win, that\u2019s it. That\u2019s what we\u2019re going to keep doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ball is in the second season of a five-year contract worth a guaranteed total of $203.9 million.<\/p>\n
Compiling eye-popping statistics has never been a problem for Ball, who is averaging 21.6 points, 6.9 rebounds and 9.6 assists per game this season.<\/p>\n
But he\u2019s still attempting to regain his form after he played in only 47 games last season, and because he missed six games this season because of a right-ankle impingement. He\u2019s made only 39 percent of his shot attempts from the field and only 30 percent of his 3-point tries, both career lows, and also has a reputation as a below-average, disengaged defender.<\/p>\n
Hornets coach Charles Lee spoke to reporters after Ball\u2019s question-and-answer session and was told about Ball\u2019s comments Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad to hear what he had to say because I would echo a lot of the same things,\u201d Lee said. \u201cOur relationship, our ability to have communication between myself and Melo and (Hornets) president of basketball operations Jeff (Peterson) is really high, and I think that he\u2019s always communicated to us (that) he wants to build this thing with us.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe understands what it\u2019s going to take to try to win and who we need in the building and stuff, so I think that he is just committed to Charlotte. He\u2019s talked about how much he loves the city and the fans, and that\u2019s all I ever hear and that\u2019s all I focus on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charlotte Hornets point guard LaMelo Ball said a report that he\u2019s \u201cgrown increasingly frustrated\u201d with the franchise and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[11949,355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-306285","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-charlotte-hornets","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}