Basketball offers many avenues of dominion over one’s opponent. Physical dominance is the most apparent, but the most evocative path is almost psychosocial. That is to say, it’s thrilling to witness an offensive player challenge a defender to a duel of imaginations, wherein basketball becomes a one-sided guessing game. Can you think the way I do? Can you move exactly in the way you envision that I can? Or am I about to blow your mind? I used to think about this dynamic a lot with Allen Iverson. This past week, I’ve considered it as it pertains to LaMelo Ball, who is in the midst of a delightful heater in his long-awaited return to play.
Case in point: Game 2 of the Charlotte Hornets’ regular season. Hornets-Hawks in Atlanta, third quarter. An errant pass from Clint Capela is intercepted by LaMelo, who ambles into the frontcourt with Dyson Daniels and Trae Young as Atlanta’s only lines of defense. Ball takes an elongated gallop step right on the Hawks logo at center court, a signal that the blossoming all-world defender better buckle up for one of LaMelo’s joyride drives in transition. But in that very instant, Ball deadens all momentum as he stands 26 feet from the basket, above the top of the arc, pulling up for the most nonchalant 3-pointer ever taken with 21 seconds remaining on the shot clock. An absolutely brain-rotting moment of vintage Ball brothers audacity. I smile. All I hear is LaVar Ball’s voice in my head, from all those years ago. “All you’re trying to do is get a good shot,” the Ball patriarch once told me in 2016. “I can’t help it if we get it in the first two or three seconds.”
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Please forgive me for getting a little nostalgic. It’s been almost eight and a half years since I wrote the very first story published on The Ringer’s main website: a feature on the Ball family in the aftermath of a legendary 35-0 undefeated season of high school basketball—and what it said about the future of basketball writ large. It was titled “Be Like Steph?,” and it examined how the Ball brothers had been influenced by the Golden State Warriors, who were Finals bound in the greatest regular-season campaign in NBA history. (Heh.) The story cast its spotlight on Lonzo and LaVar because of course it did. Lonzo was the National Player of the Year bringing his unique slant on the game to UCLA; LaVar was the loquacious visionary.
That Chino Hills era was a fleeting jolt to basketball’s status quo, small glimmers and fragments of where the game could soon go: no-look full-length polo passes from Lonzo to the corners for wide-open 3s, back when Nikola Jokic still had to share the frontcourt with Jusuf Nurkic; ridiculous pull-up jumpers 30-plus feet away from the basket that flew concurrently with Steph Curry’s, more than two years before Damian Lillard fully embraced the deep 3; a breakneck pace that would have fit right into the schemes of the 2023-24 Indiana Pacers, creating space and amplitude along both x- and y-axes.
LaMelo was 14 then, maybe 120 pounds soaking wet. Beyond LaVar’s bold declarations of his supremacy among his sons, there was no telling what the youngest could or would become. His teenage itinerary from a semi-pro league of his father’s creation to Lithuania to Australia further shrouded LaMelo’s true professional viability—but there was never any question about his talent. He’s always played with a proprietary blend of impropriety. Like someone who was not only encouraged but also goaded into shooting from half court by the time he was 7, someone who was allowed as a child only to play against kids twice his age and size, someone who has a fundamental feel for what he can get away with because he’s had to get away with things his entire life. He was raised to break the mold, trained to play without conscience as a limitation. LaMelo was trained to be an almost feral representation of basketball’s future, as imagined by a one-time New York Jets practice squad defensive end with grand (but loose) designs of world domination.
All this to say: LaMelo plays a sinful, diabolical brand of basketball. It rules.
The allure of LaMelo never really felt like it was about the efficacy of his play, but the potential within the kernels of his talent—and what it could look like at the highest levels of basketball. It made sense that Lonzo was our gateway introduction to the family—the deep 3s and Hail Mary passes were part of his repertoire, but in measured doses; it was an appropriate primer for LaMelo’s iridescent chaos to come. Seeing Lonzo, followed by LaMelo, was like watching a flicker of light finding its way through the dark. Because we know how these things usually go. Big Sports as a general entity responds to imagination and possibility, by default, with derision and skepticism until those same kernels become the established blueprints that risk-averse organizations wind up shamelessly duplicating. What is LaMelo if not the new archetypal lead creator—a tall, sharpshooting ball handler with vision and feel?
Of course, it’s been easier to grapple with the ideas of Lonzo and LaMelo given how seldom we’ve seen them on the court these past few years. Their post-hype narrative has unfortunately warped into one of star-crossed brothers. LaMelo missed 106 of 164 possible regular-season games in the previous two seasons. Lonzo missed more than two and a half seasons—a span of more than 1,000 days—recovering from numerous left knee maladies that required bone grafting and both tendon and cartilage transplants. Their bodies have failed them to this point, the disappointment of lost seasons supplanting the unique joy-giving nature of their respective styles. LaMelo is currently ranked 53rd on The Ringer’s top-100 player rankings, which feels hysterically low at this moment in time. Lonzo, in fleeting moments on the court this past week, has shown the world he is who he’s always been: an atmospheric presence on the court, so seamlessly integrated in the flow of offense and defense that he becomes both indistinguishable from the whole and utterly essential to its function. Even after so much time away, his impact was undeniable: In three games, the Bulls have outscored opponents by 20.3 points per 100 possessions with Lonzo on the floor, the highest net rating on the team for any player who’s played regular minutes. They’re getting outscored at a rate of 13.6 points per 100 possessions when he’s off it. But luck has once again eluded him. On Tuesday, the Bulls announced that Lonzo will be reevaluated in 10 days after he suffered a right wrist injury in Monday’s win over the Grizzlies. LaMelo will have to carry the family mantle alone for the time being. And what he’s been able to accomplish after a week of play has been nothing short of astonishing.
LaMelo has hit the ground running after an offseason of strengthening his ankles, much like Steph did after his own early-career injury woes. It would make sense if LaMelo were besieged by the reticence that lingers from recurring injuries, but he has thrown himself into the fire this season. The Hornets star has always been a surprisingly efficient 3-point shooter, but he’s created a new trajectory for himself in the first week of action: Only Steph has logged an entire season averaging 12 3-point attempts per game while hitting on at least 40 percent of them. That is the company LaMelo is keeping through the first week of the season.
Arguably more intriguing when it comes to his overall development: LaMelo’s command over the Hornets offense has new dimensions. He’s averaging 31.7 points per game, the third most in the league, and his free throw attempt rate after the first week of play is at an all-time high (38.7 percent), echoing Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s rate in his own age-23 season (38.5 percent). With full confidence in his range of motion, LaMelo is averaging the most drives per game of his career. Now that he’s finally generating consistent pressure at the rim, the Hornets’ drive-and-kick game will have real legs—or at least it should, if the Hornets ever start converting on some of their open attempts. (After a week of play, only Young and James Harden have more potential assists.)
The attention LaMelo draws will only magnify once he fine-tunes his exit strategy in the maw of the defense. While he lacks the vertical pop to regularly punch in points around the rim, he’s found early success with a sort of running floater in the lane, leveraging his decelerative gifts with his off-tempo and wrong-footed leaps. The next step—something that SGA has perfected in his years with the Thunder—might just be the ability to win through contact absorption, finishing plays even as he’s taking licks in the paint. LaMelo has always had an innate touch, but finding ways to level up his play strength could be the skeleton key to unlocking his potential as a true offense unto himself. It isn’t hard to imagine a forward-momentum bump into a goofy-footed lofting runner becoming something of a signature move.
And if that all clicks—if LaMelo becomes a 6-foot-7 passing savant who draws fouls at a near-elite rate, shoots and hits 3s at legendary frequency, and still has it in him to surprise us with the most dumbfounding no-no-yes plays we’ll ever see—would he not be one of the most terrifyingly entertaining offensive forces the league has ever seen? I guess this is what I’ve been angling at all this time. The Ball brothers have been a part of the greater basketball consciousness for nearly a decade now. In spite of everything, and all they’ve battled to get back on the court, their play still has a way of expanding our imagination.
