Latest LaMelo Ball comparison is not what Hornets fans want to hear

The upcoming 2025-26 season is a “prove it” year for LaMelo. While the young guard still has multiple areas of his game to work on, the main weakness by far remains his durability. 

If LaMelo can stay healthy, he can be a perennial All-Star and a cornerstone for the Hornets, validating his lucrative rookie extension signed back in June of 2023. On the other end of the spectrum, if Melo continues on the poor durability track that he’s been on recently, the Hornets are more or less doomed with him as their franchise player.

ESPN’s Tim Bontemps likened the latter scenario to what the New Orleans Pelicans have experienced with Zion Williamson’s durability nightmare. 

In speaking about LaMelo’s upcoming season on the “Brian Windhorst & The Hoop Collective” podcast, Bontemps said the following:

“If we're back here talking about the Hornets next summer, and he's played 45 games again, or 50 games again, or 40 games … then we're just in the Zion Williamson territory with him going forward,” Bontemps said. “And then you can't do anything with your team.”

Williamson has appeared in just 35.7 games per season in his career (six possible seasons). LaMelo has appeared in 46.2 games per season in five seasons.

The bad news for the Pelicans and Hornets is that NBA history shows that winning teams are built on durable superstars.

Consider the last three NBA champions as perfect examples: the Oklahoma City Thunder, Boston Celtics, and Denver Nuggets. Each of those teams had a superstar leading the charge who has been very durable throughout his career. Take a look at each star’s regular-season games played average over their respective careers:

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: 66
Jayson Tatum: 73.1
Nikola Jokić: 74.5

The best teams in the league almost always have a player at the head of the operation who plays in the vast majority of regular season games, which isn’t a complicated correlation to understand, of course — if you’re best player isn’t consistently available, you’re not going to be that successful of a team.

Durability matters not only for team success, but for the success and legacy of individual players. The two guys that most fans and analysts view as the greatest two players in the history of the game, Michael Jordan and LeBron James, were ridiculously durable. In LeBron’s case, of course, we should be speaking in the present tense.

In Jordan’s 12 seasons with the Bulls (not counting his 1993 retirement or return during the end of the 1994-95 season), MJ appeared in 76.1 regular-season games per year. Jordan’s only major injury was a broken foot in his second NBA season, which caused him to miss all but 18 games that year. He came back and averaged a career-high 37.1 points per game the next season.

Amazingly, Jordan played in all 82 games of the regular season in eight of his 12 full Bulls seasons. He also played in all 82 games in his final NBA season with the Washington Wizards, at age 39!

Then there’s LeBron, who has been a monument of durability for over two decades, averaging 71 games per regular season over 22 consecutive campaigns.

We’re not saying LaMelo Ball needs to have MJ or Bron durability, but he needs to avoid Zion territory, that’s for sure. He hasn’t done that over the past three seasons.

Hopefully, 2025-26 will be a different deal.

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