Shams: LaMelo to TWolves, Naz to Hornets

[Who]

Ohh, so the trade exception CHA got doesn't matter.

They have a ton of cap space now. They were at around $150mil and dumped LaMelo's $40mil and Josh Green's $15mil. They now have a ton of cap space.

So they are now a major player in free agency although I am not sure what is out there that they can go after. Or they can just absorb a major salary like Ja Morant. It doesn't matter if the TPE matches up. They have cap space. That is better. And loads of it.

[Celtics2021]

Ohh, so the trade exception CHA got doesn't matter.

They have a ton of cap space now. They were at around $150mil and dumped LaMelo's $40mil and Josh Green's $15mil. They now have a ton of cap space.

So they are now a major player in free agency although I am not sure what is out there that they can go after. Or they can just absorb a major salary like Ja Morant. It doesn't matter if the TPE matches up. They have cap space. That is better. And loads of it.

They do not have that much, since they are resigning Coby White and his cap hold is $24 million.

[Who]

Jon Krawczynski: The Wolves have been trying to get LaMelo Ball for two years. They paid a price with Naz, but there is elation throughout the building about pairing Melo and Anthony Edwards.

Jon Krawczynski: ?He?s going to make everybody better. That was the thing that was missing." -- Wolves source on the addition of LaMelo Ball.

Brian Windhorst on LaMelo the Minnesota: ?He?s (Ant) is tired of being double teamed. They get him a dynamic scorer in the backcourt. You throw a double at Ant Edwards with Lamelo Ball on the court, you are playing with fire. Lamelo will drop 10 3s on you in a blink of an eye?

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Sam Quinn: If Minnesota is keeping Donte DiVincenzo, they somehow have to turn Josh Green's $14.7 million salary into a playable power forward. Without draft picks, they might have to include Terrence Shannon to do so. But that's the next order of business here.

Yossi Gozlan: Charlotte Hornets salary cap situation after trading LaMelo Ball and Josh Green for Naz Reid and picks. $75 million in room below the luxury tax line. Enough room to re-sign Coby White, use the entirety of their $40.8 million trade exception, and $15 million mid-level.

[jpotter33]

I just don't see the fit of Lamelo with Minny and Ant. Not sure that Ant has the patience to deal with Lamelo's non-sense either.

[Phantom255x]

I guess the obvious answer is they may use their new cap space to make more moves, but they essentially traded Lamelo for Naz Reid + 3 second rounders. The pick swaps may not even matter much, MIN will be a playoff team and CHA will probably also be a play-in team at least. Not really high picks either way.

[Goldstar88]

Who knows, Maybe they are making room for Temetrius Jamel Morant. Someone is going to give Ja a chance and I don't think there is anyway he goes back to Memphis.

So they trade away LaMelo and then bring in Morant? That doesn?t make much sense if you ask me. But then again, stranger things have happened..

[Who]

Wrong thread. Sorry.

[Celtics2021]

Who knows, Maybe they are making room for Temetrius Jamel Morant. Someone is going to give Ja a chance and I don't think there is anyway he goes back to Memphis.

So they trade away LaMelo and then bring in Morant? That doesn?t make much sense if you ask me. But then again, stranger things have happened..

Hmm ... Brandon Miller scares me.

For a guy his size, he gets to the rim and to foul line very little. This leads to only a small chunk of his offense generated high percentage buckets. Then he takes half of his shots from 3.

He averages about as many turnovers as assists. 1.36:1.00 AST:TOV ratio or his career. That falls to 1:1 without LaMelo.

He doesn't rebound much. 4.6rpg in 31.4mpg for his career. For a guy with his size, length and athleticism ... that is poor.

I think Miller takes a ton of 3s in part because that is the Charlotte offense.  They have Charles Lee coaching who clearly adopted that philosophy of Joe.  Of the 13 players who took at least 100 shots for Charlotte last year, Miller was only 8th in 3-point attempt rate. So, most of his teammates shot from 3 even more than he did.  I am with you that I would like him to get to the rim more, but it is difficult to tell if that was due to ability or the offensive philosophy of the team.  Rebounding is not a strength, but it is not very different from Jaylen?s rates.

[keevsnick]

I guess the obvious answer is they may use their new cap space to make more moves, but they essentially traded Lamelo for Naz Reid + 3 second rounders. The pick swaps may not even matter much, MIN will be a playoff team and CHA will probably also be a play-in team at least. Not really high picks either way.

There is more value now to pick swaps with teams you think might end up in the play-in zone becasue the odds of such a team moving up in the draft are now much higher.

That being said the swaps in 2029 and 2030 are actually swaps of picks that were already swapped, so they really don't have much value at all. Meanwhile the one straight swap in 2028 is a year you'd expect the Wolves to still be good and the Hornets to maybe still be bad.

So not a lot of value here for the Hornets.

[Kernewek]

I just don't see the fit of Lamelo with Minny and Ant. Not sure that Ant has the patience to deal with Lamelo's non-sense either.

I think it can work, provided Lamelo is somewhat healthy (massive what-if, of course) - also I'm not sure that Lamelo is the one with the extra baggage out of that duo, at least not off the court. 

[gift]

I kind of like this for both teams. Obviously it opens things up for Charlotte and gets rid of a player who might've held them back. For Minny, they were going to have to reset things anyway. Lamelo potentially makes Ant more dangerous since things are going to be a little less predictable. Ant needs another threat to open things up for him. Probably not a recipe for long term success, but a decent shake up for the next couple of years.

A player that was holding them back? He was the engine that made the team go.

Kneuppel?s shooting is top-tier and Miller has the pieces to be a quality wing talent. Neither can match the overall impact of Ball running the offense. He was the conductor of Charles Lee?s scheme. Most of their plays start with Ball running a pick-and-roll and seeing how the defense reacts before deciding to shoot, drive or dish it out to one of his talented teammates.

Charlotte?s offensive rating dropped like a rock from 125.22 to 113.30 per 100 possessions when Ball left the court, reflecting the roster?s lack of a backup point guard as well as Ball?s importance to making the whole system work. He opened up the floor for his teammates and was the guy to pass them the ball when the defense showed cracks. The team did pick up a possible replacement in Christian Anderson in the first round of the draft. But relying heavily on rookie point guards is almost always a fool?s errand. Particularly for an organization that just got a taste of contention for the first time since Kemba Walker was in his prime.

Yeah, I'm not saying this is addition by subtraction overall. It's a move that opens up opportunity. Lamelo was a fundamental piece, but the team clearly didn't like the reliability of that fundamental piece. Last season made them start measuring themselves against higher standards and I think they didn't like the ceiling that comes with Lamelo being their engine.

[Who]

According to ESPN's Shams Charania, the Hornets plan to keep Reid on their roster despite already receiving trade inquiries for the versatile big man.

"They already got some trade calls in on [Naz Reid], but the plan is right now to keep him. This is a team that could still shift the roster around a little bit if they want," Charania reported on ESPN's SportsCenter.

[Who]

Tim MacMahon

"I texted several general managers a simple question, what do you think of the LaMelo deal? And one replied one sentence, Tim is a riverboat gambler.

And this is big-time, high-stakes gambling that he's doing right here. And you understand the swing that he's taking, you understand the hole in the roster it's creating. Chris Finch is also one of the most creative coaches in the league and he's going to earn his money figuring out how to make this work."

I like that - "a riverboat gambler".

Jon Krawczynski:

"I think Tim Connelly and Chris Finch have long believed that LaMelo Ball is a perfect fit for Anthony Edwards in that backcourt. And I know that over the last several years, they have checked in on LaMelo and Charlotte a couple of times.

Each time they were turned away, and so something has happened in the last couple of days or weeks to get the Charlotte Hornets to a point where they were comfortable parting with LaMelo Ball."

It does seem strange. They were so good after putting Diabate into the starting lineup. They had 9 wins and 20 losses when they put Diabate into the starting lineup permanently on Dec 23. From then on, the Hornets had 35 wins and 18 losses (54 win pace).

There was so much enthusiasm and optimism around the team. This trade feels like it came out of nowhere. You do wonder if something happened to trigger it.

[Coby White], who was critical in Charlotte's overtime win against Miami and played just 17 minutes in a 121-90 blowout elimination loss to Orlando, had also communicated a strong desire ahead of free agency to be a starter in the league whether in Charlotte or elsewhere, sources say.

I don't think it is that.

Charlotte also quickly resumed negotiations with White, who sources say initially turned down an offer following the Finals in search of a starting role, now with definite clarity on his potential future under Lee. (White's three-year, $74 million deal, as Yahoo reported earlier, is fully guaranteed with no player or team options.)

[Who]

Some stats from NY Times article

The Hornets were 11.6 points per 100 possessions better on offense with Ball on the floor last season, per Cleaning The Glass.

Kon Knueppel, Charlotte's terrific rookie, made 46 percent of his 3-pointers when Ball was on the court. That number dipped to 37 percent when he was off.

Ball helped lead the Hornets to a 34-17 record after Jan. 1, a stretch in which they posted the No. 1 ranked offense and 5th ranked defense.

The NY Times article continues

?He [LaMelo Ball] makes Ant better, Jaden (McDaniels) better, Rudy and Joan (Beringer) better,? one team source said. ?How many other players in the league would make your three best players better without getting in their way??

[Who]

That NY Times article. It was a good read.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7395316/2026/06/26/lamelo-ball-trade-timberwolves-anthony-edwards-fit-background/

The Spurs hounded Edwards all over the court in that second-round matchup. Connelly knew that the Wolves needed another lead ballhandler and floor spacer to take some of that pressure off him and to force defenses to think twice about sending a double-team as soon as Edwards crosses half court.

The Timberwolves explored multiple avenues to add another star next to Edwards in the days leading up to landing Ball. There were discussions with the Chicago Bulls about Josh Giddey. They had talks with the Boston Celtics about Jaylen Brown, a team source said, but the Celtics were looking for a package including Gobert, Reid and similar pick compensation that went to Charlotte for Ball, team sources said. That was just too much for the Wolves to pay for a soon-to-be 30-year-old forward who, while being a better overall player than Ball, wasn?t as clean a fit next to Edwards.

?We have to ensure that we?re creating as many good shots as possible, specifically for Ant, and whether that?s on our present roster or whether it?s looking outside of our team, it?s something that we certainly have to address,? Connelly said this week.

?We got smacked by Oklahoma City last year,? Connelly said on Tuesday, in reference to their 4-1 loss to OKC in the 2025 conference finals. ?We got smacked by San Antonio, and we know they?re teams we have to beat. ? Denver is a world champion team and (has) the best player in the world, so we know our competition is not going to sit still, and nor will we.?

The enduring image of that playoff loss to San Antonio was multiple Spurs defenders waiting for Edwards to cross half court and then pouncing on him to get the ball out of his hands. Randle and Gobert couldn?t make the Spurs pay for that strategy, and Donte DiVincenzo missed that series with a torn right Achilles tendon.

Ball?s ability to initiate offense, shoot 3-pointers at a high volume and see over the top of the defense with his 6-foot-7 frame to find open shooters is exactly what the Wolves were missing.

LaMelo and Ant are from the same draft class

Ball and Edwards both turn 25 in August. Gobert (34) and DiVincenzo (29) are the only players on the roster older than 26. Beringer, Terrence Shannon Jr. and newly re-signed Ayo Dosunmu are all raring to go. Ball has three years left on his contract, as do Edwards and McDaniels.

?Our roster is stacked for the next three years,? one team source said. ?And probably longer.?

So basically outside of Gobert, their team is full of young veterans and genuine youth. Creating a longer window to compete.