{"id":654124,"date":"2026-03-12T08:02:44","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T08:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/654124\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T08:02:44","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T08:02:44","slug":"lamelo-ball-scores-30-as-hornets-beat-kings-117-109-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/654124\/","title":{"rendered":"LaMelo Ball scores 30 as Hornets beat Kings 117-109"},"content":{"rendered":"

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — – LaMelo Ball<\/a> scored 20 of his 30 points in the first half and the Charlotte Hornets<\/a> beat the Sacramento Kings<\/a> 117-109 on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

Miles Bridges<\/a> had 26 points as Charlotte won at Sacramento for the first time in more than two years. Standout rookie Kon Knueppel<\/a> added 24 points and Brandon Miller<\/a> scored 20.<\/p>\n

DeMar DeRozan<\/a> scored 39 points for the Kings and moved past Hall of Famer Tim Duncan into 18th place on the NBA’s career scoring list with 26,505 points. Duncan, a 15-time All-Star, had 26,496 points in 19 seasons.<\/p>\n

Ball shot 10 of 22 and made six 3-pointers. He had six rebounds and five assists.<\/p>\n

The Hornets trailed much of the first half but began taking control in the third quarter. Bridges’ alley-oop pass to Miller gave Charlotte an 88-83 lead, and White’s three-point play early in the fourth made it 99-88.<\/p>\n

After the Kings got within 108-100 with three minutes remaining, Bridges made a floater. Ball then hit his sixth 3-pointer of the night and added a pair of free throws to help Charlotte close it out.<\/p>\n

Nique Clifford<\/a> had 18 points and seven assists for the Kings, who were attempting to win their third straight for the first time since early January.<\/p>\n

Precious Achiuwa<\/a> added 14 points and eight rebounds for Sacramento and Daeqwon Plowden<\/a> scored 13 points.<\/p>\n

The Kings played without Russell Westbrook<\/a> (quad bruise).<\/p>\n

Ball and Bridges combined for six 3-pointers and 31 points in the first half but Charlotte committed eight turnovers and trailed 62-57 at the break.<\/p>\n

Up next<\/p>\n

Hornets: At San Antonio on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Kings: Visit the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday.<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/NBA<\/a>br\/]<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SACRAMENTO, Calif. — – LaMelo Ball scored 20 of his 30 points in the first half and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3777],"tags":[84438,7,684,473,3878,130,685,6,477],"class_list":{"0":"post-654124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-charlotte-hornets","8":"tag-84438","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-charlotte","11":"tag-charlotte-hornets","12":"tag-charlottehornets","13":"tag-espn","14":"tag-hornets","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-sacramento-kings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116215163699214739","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}