{"id":713206,"date":"2026-04-18T13:27:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T13:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/713206\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T13:27:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T13:27:25","slug":"lamelo-ball-takes-aim-at-play-calling-after-hornets-blowout-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/713206\/","title":{"rendered":"LaMelo Ball takes aim at play-calling after Hornets&#8217; blowout exit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/nba\/charlotte-hornets\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Charlotte Hornets<\/a> are done for the 2025-26 season. The <a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/nba\/orlando-magic\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Orlando Magic<\/a> beat them 121-90 on Friday night. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/nba\/orlando-magic\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Magic<\/a> were ahead by 31 points at halftime. Ball only had two points by then. He said what he thought went wrong after the game.<\/p>\n<p>Ball talked about the coaching staff after the game<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think we were doing a lot of things and we were getting pushed around &#8221; Ball said to the reporters after the loss. &#8220;I think I should have taken the ball from the start.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ball did not say anything about coach Charles Lee directly. But this season was about LaMelo following the plan, so his comment means something.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Lamelo Ball threw his coach under the bus after the loss \ud83d\udc40<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel like we were running a lot of plays and getting pushed around, I should\u2019ve just took the ball from the beginning.\u201d <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/VcA72og0xh\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/VcA72og0xh<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 BrickCenter (@BrickCenter_) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BrickCenter_\/status\/2045362196889448629?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">April 18, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Saying you should have done your thing from the start in a loss that bad is a big thing to say. You can tell he was really frustrated.<\/p>\n<p>Ball scored 23 points. 21 Of those points came in the second half after the Magic were already winning. He only had two points in the first 24 minutes of the game.<\/p>\n<p>The Charlotte <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/nba\/charlotte-hornets\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Hornets<\/a> won 44 games this year which&#8217;s the most they have won since 2016. This was supposed to be the season they did something.<\/p>\n<p>The Magic showed something on Friday. When the Hornets fell behind early and needed Ball to take over, the system might have gotten in the way.<\/p>\n<p>Coach Lee will probably be asked about Ball&#8217;s comments before the offseason starts. Nobody knows if this is a problem between him and the coach or if he was just upset after a bad game.<\/p>\n<p>The Charlotte Hornets have not made the playoffs in 11 seasons now. At some point, they will run out of excuses.<\/p>\n<p>More news:<\/p>\n<p>                            <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Charlotte Hornets are done for the 2025-26 season. The Orlando Magic beat them 121-90 on Friday night.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3777],"tags":[7,684,473,3878,685,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-713206","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-charlotte-hornets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-charlotte","10":"tag-charlotte-hornets","11":"tag-charlottehornets","12":"tag-hornets","13":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116425945491012086","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713206","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=713206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}