Charlotte Hornets: Grading LaMelo Ball’s First Career Preseason

This article will recap Charlotte Hornets’ rookie, LaMelo Ball’s performance from the preseason.

It’s no secret that the Charlotte Hornets have been buzzing (pun intended) since Michael Jordan and the Hornets drafted LaMelo Ball at number three overall in this year’s NBA draft. It’s also no secret that by drafting Ball there has been a lot of publicity as well as a lot of eyes watching from around the league.

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However, success isn’t defined by the amount of hype a player has coming into the league. There have been a lot of players that were high draft picks but very few have turned in to become all-time greats. Success is proven on the court, not by how many articles are written about them.

But LaMelo is still very young, so before we start getting too far ahead of ourselves, we need to pump the breaks a little in order to take a closer look at his first preseason as a professional basketball player.

In this post, we will grade different areas of his game in order to come to an overall grade for his first career preseason. These areas include his court presence, vision, and awareness, his field goal percentage and points per game (PPG), his passing, and defensive play. With that said, let’s get grading!