Charlotte Hornets: Comparing LaMelo Ball’s rookie campaign to Ja Morant’s through 20 games

Average Points and Field Goal Percentage Per Game

When comparing two players one of the first things experts want to look at is the points scored by each player. The amount of points scored is without a doubt one of the most important categories to compare. When a player is in line to be elected into the Hall of Fame, the number of points scored over their career is a major factor in the decision process.

Through the first 20 games of Ja Morant’s rookie season, he averaged 18.7 points per game. This is one of the most impressive stats of Morant’s rookie campaign, especially because of the fact that he did this in his first 20 games as an NBA player.

What is also impressive is that in the game he played against LeBron James and the Lakers, he led his team in points, scoring 26 points and going 62.5% from the field.

Through the first quarter of his rookie season, LaMelo Ball is only averaging 11.1 points per game. While Ball has flashes of being a dominant scorer, he has lacked consistency in that department. There is very little doubt that Ball will go out and get at least 8 to10 points in a game, but his ability to score 20+ is lacking.

As I said, Ball shows flashes, but there is still more to be desired from him in this department. To put this in perspective, through the first 20 games of his rookie year, Ja Morant never went a game without scoring a single point, whereas Ball was held scoreless in his first NBA game.

Shortly after someone mentions the average points per game, the topic of field goal percentage immediately follows. So where does Ball’s field goal percentage rank among Morant’s? Pretty close actually.

In his first 20 games, Morant averaged a field goal percentage of 46.2%, which made him an easy pick to be Rookie of the Year. He made nearly half of all his shots in a league where it’s extremely hard to score points.

As for Ball, through the first 18 games of his career, he averages 40.3% from the field. As you can see, while his numbers aren’t better than Morant’s in this category, his numbers are competitive to those of his counterpart.