Top NBA prospect doesn’t want to play with Charlotte Hornets’ LaMelo Ball

Top NBA prospect doesn’t want to play with Charlotte Hornets’ LaMelo Ball

because right now um I I’m just I’m gonna go second time today I’m gonna sound like an old man i don’t know when it happened i used to be young and hip uh not anymore so there’s a there’s a report out there from Mike Lasset Lacit who’s a sports anchor for Carolina Sports Live uh he spoke with a source who told him at least one NBA draft lottery pick refused to work out for the the Charlotte Hornets out of a desire not to play with LaMelo Ball the Hornets have the fourth pick in the draft and a a prospect said “Thank you for the invite i will not be working out with you because I don’t want to play with your best player or second best player depending on how you feel about like a Brandon Miller and this is where I get to sound old lottery picks aren’t what they used to be top prospects aren’t what they used to be and I hate thinking that because I I do not believe sports ever really get worse right you can go back and look at the like Olympic times over the last century right humans are unbelievably good at getting better at things uh better training better nutrition better uh evolution i don’t know uh we are traditionally better so when when right guys from the 90s are like “Oh LeBron couldn’t play in my era.” I’m like “Yes he could he absolutely could and so could 95% of the people that play today they’re bigger taller faster stronger and their their shooting ability would make you think that they were a wizard not a Washington wizard a literal wizard in 1992.” So so that’s usually my belief but then I hear a story like this and I go you know what physically they might be better they’re they they’ve been trained trained excuse me in highlevel basketball thought and reading the pick and roll from a younger age they’re better at it but they might be softer the person in the NBA that carries all of the sway that has all of the power is the one that plays the best play better than LaMelo and you can demand he get traded and that’s what the like whether it’s right or wrong that’s what the prospects used to think they were never worried it was it was very much um let me think of the the the proper phrasing right it was it was never oh I’m worried about how I’m going to play with them and it was always about they better be worried about how they’re going to play with me ego is good in sports especially from from lottery picks lottery picks i feel like we th we throw that around and don’t address what lottery picks means you’re one of the 14 best players in the world in your age bracket and if you are somebody that is turning pro immediately when your eligibility is ready like a after one year in college or the the first year you are eligible overseas then then you are probably even better than the 14 best players in your age bracket because there’s a couple that that have taken extra years to marinate and are now entering the NBA draft pool you are one of the 14 best players in the world at one of the most international sports and you’re worried about playing with someone else never would have happened years ago someone else who also is like probably one of the better playmakers in the East in the league that’s the other thing I could see you not liking LaMelo’s reputation going back to when he was kind of the the young annoying brother on the the Ball Brothers Ball families uh reality television online show whatever that was i could see you just not wanting to be a part of that but teammates don’t have to like each other and he has he’s basically an eight assist per game guy he might shoot a not great percentage but he also attracts so much attention from the defense i imagine he makes your job easier what do you want and by the way again I don’t know if it matters in the long run but guys would care about where they were drafted i want to be picked first i want to be picked top five top three top four whatever being passing on the opportunity to be dra to be drafted fourth means you might fall to eighth cuz there’s no guarantee that number five has the same board and on and on and on and on it’s quite frankly it’s soft and I don’t know which prospect it is and I don’t know why you would not want to go play with LaMelo because the the other option would be maybe it’s a just a has nothing to do with the LaMelo’s reputation or his uh perceived whatever right he drives a different like Skittles colored car every day maybe it has nothing to do with that maybe it’s another point guard and they’re just saying “No I don’t want to go somewhere where somebody else is going to have the ball i want the ball in my hands.” That’s the competitive stuff that would frustrate me even more because coaches put the ball in the hands of the people that are best with the with the ball so so go get it go get it trust me if you have the ball in your hands and you make a great decision and it ends in a bucket they’re not going to give you the ball less they’re not going to give you the ball less and maybe it’s listening to agents more because I do think agents have a a a requirement a responsibility to get in the way of the ridiculously competitive decision-m from certain players i remember thinking this when Richard Sherman at some point and I don’t know why I remember this richard Sherman at some point uh the the corner for the the Seahawks maybe when he was negotiating his deal with the ners did he play for the Niners um but he negotiated by himself he didn’t have an agent and the thing was ridiculously loaded with incentives which I believe he actually hit a bunch of but I remember thinking oh that’s why you need an agent cuz athletes are so competitive that they’ll put Yeah you know what take 60% of my salary only if I go to the Pro Bowl because of course I’m going to the Pro Bowl because I can’t imagine a world where I don’t go to the Pro Bowl at some point they need an agent there going like well yeah what if you get hurt or what if what if there’s there’s a bad stretch of you you try to play hurt and you give up some touchdowns now you don’t make the let’s let’s protect ourselves a little bit so so perhaps this is a an agent that turned it down saying it’s not smart it’s not good for your career but I I would hope you would overrule it in that situation i’ve always believed and the draft there are some that believe the draft is like constitutionally not cool just at its foundation you don’t have any say over where you get to go in your career no no no other uh um and no other industries careers do you not have any say over where you go i always say yeah there’s a lot of stuff you don’t you don’t have in other industries that you have in professional sports i’ve always been of the belief you work your butt off to make yourself the best prospect you can you go show how great you are to everybody that asks you get drafted where you get drafted and you go you go for handsome compensation right because by passing on I don’t want to go to number four you could be millions of dollars you’re giving up there for handsome compensation you go and and you show them why the things you want are the things they should provide you with but I don’t want to play with him what are we doing to to follow up as uh Mike Lay said he did uh follow up on this uh from from Carolina Sports Live who gave the original report said to to follow up since there have been questions this wasn’t a position issue or thing this was a that guy holds the ball a lot thing again like I said I’ve never met a basketball coach who does not who who is not okay with somebody that does really good things with the basketball getting it more so if you want the ball in your hands more than LaMelo get the basketball do something good with it all right let’s go back to him get the ball do something good with it it’s the same thing I used to tell uh wide receivers right because every wide receiver is open on every play every wide receiver uh can beat their guy every time right this guy on me stinks throw me the ball i used to look at him and go “All right we we’ve got our number one wide receiver we all know who he is when I throw it to him he catches it most of the time and even when it’s a bad pass he bails me out a lot so I’m going to keep throwing it to him if you do that when I throw it to you then I’m more likely to throw it to you and by the way the defense decides where I throw it in the first place with with my reads but it’s on the 50/50 decisions if you want me to give you the benefit of the doubt catch them every time you do I’m going to be more inclined to do it next time that’s where the competitiveness comes in lamelo has the ball so much if you’re better with it you’ll have the ball more yeah you’ll get the ball away from him that’s That’s how it works this is the NBA this is not little league everybody does not have to play two innings in the field and get at least one at bat that’s not how it works not at all and and while we’re talking about the Hornets Mike did also gave a little report here uh earlier this morning he said his understanding is Hornets management wants VJ Edgecomb to help transform their defense but they understand there’s a very strong chance he’ll be off the board should that happen the gossip that he’s hearing is that they want to trade down with the best case being one of either Yakonis Coniple or Trey Johnson remaining at that pick they’d trade down to so looks like they’re targeting VJ Edgecom with that fourth pick but they think there’s a good chance he might not be there vj Edgecomb would actually be a pretty good fit there i think he could do a lot without And by the way he didn’t have the ball in his hand a lot at Baylor uh Robert Wright who ironically was Cooper Flags high school teammate had the ball a lot and VJ Edgecomb was catching oops and and catching knocking down threes uh so it would fit but he might not be there he might go number three overall

Tim Donnelly & Max Goren react to a report that an NBA lottery prospect refused to work out for the Charlotte Hornets because he didn’t want to play with LaMelo Ball.

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