LaMelo Ball is officially the NBA's biggest gunner

Cam Thomas was supposed to come for the throne, but LaMelo Ball has officially seized the crown of the NBA's biggest gunner. The Hornets guard is attempting 24.4 shots per game this season, the highest mark since James Harden in 2018-19.

Over his last three games, Ball has attempted 95 shots (31.7 per game), 36 more than Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in the same timeframe. For the season, the difference between his 414 field-goal attempts and the second-ranked De'Aaron Fox's 363 tells the story.

While it's been tremendous to see Ball evolve into a three-way scorer — with a midrange float game so pure — one wonders if he's swaying a bit away from the player he was supposed to be: a pass-first point guard. Ball entered the league with that reputation after his stints in Chino Hills and playing abroad, where he emulated his older brother in playing an uptempo, Showtime Lakers-esque style of basketball. 

He carried that joyous, unselfish style into the NBA, averaging 8.4 assists in his second season as a starter and again averaging eight dimes the following year. This season, though, his assists have crashed to 6.9, and worryingly, a lot of his passes have come at the end of a shot clock. The best indicator of that is his league-high 37.8 USG% (usage percentage), an alarming 6.3 percentage points higher than his previous career high (31.5). When he averaged 8.4 assists in 2022-23, his USG% was only 27.1 — he passed the ball early in the shot clock and didn't go James Harden in Houston.

If Ball isn't careful, he will quickly garner the reputation of an empty-calorie scorer, seeing as his Hornets are 6-11 despite his heroics. Over the past three games, he became the first player in franchise history to score 35+ points in three straight games, but he was a Brandon Miller block away from going 0-3 the stretch.