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NBA rumors: Hornets trade LaMelo Ball to Clippers in Bill Simmons’ mind-blowing proposal
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- NBA rumors: Hornets trade LaMelo Ball to Clippers in Bill Simmons’ mind-blowing proposal
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Nearly two months into the NBA season, most teams around the league have a good sense of who will and will not be contending, which means some teams are quickly going to turn to trades to either upgrade their roster or cash out amid a terrible season. And that is where Bill Simmons comes in.
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A habitual user of the trade machine, Simmons has been throwing out potential trades for a long time now, but his latest will certainly, much to his chagrin, be aggregated quite a bit because it involves the C harlotte Hornets sending LaMelo Ball back to Southern California in exchange for the Los Angeles Clippers ' James Harden.
"What about LaMelo and Harden in a deal together?" Simmons said on his podcast . "If you're Charlotte and you like your team, and you struck oil with Knueppel and Brandon Miller is back and Bridges is good and you're in the East, and you're not going to be one of the three worst teams in the East — there's just no scenario where you're going to be in the bottom three; your team just has too much talent. What if you just turn LaMelo into Harden, and now you have Harden and Knueppel and Bridges and Brandon Miller, and some big guys. And now you might be in a Play-In team. Maybe you just do that over riding this LaMelo rollercoaster for a minute more.
"And if you're the Clippers, LaMelo, a chance of scenery. He's one of the most famous players in the league with people under 30. I think he has the biggest social media of anyone other than LeBron . It changes your team. I just thought it was an interesting one."
As it stands, the Hornets and Clippers are among the worst teams in their respective conferences; Charlotte is 8-18, bad enough for 12th in the relatively mediocre Eastern Conference, while L.A. is 6-20 and tied for second-to-last in the West. While both could, in theory, salvage their seasons with runs to the Play-In — the Hornets and Clippers are 2.5 and 4.5 games out of 10th place, respectively — some major changes are needed for that to happen.
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Would a Ball-for-Harden trade be big enough to turn around either of the teams' seasons? It's possible, especially for Charlotte, considering Harden has played nearly 100 more games than Ball since the latter entered the league, and Harden has also never missed the playoffs in his 17-year NBA career, which could be a boon for a frequent lottery team like the Hornets.
As for the Clippers, Ball, when healthy, would certainly excite fans and possibly help L.A. compete in a rather stacked Western Conference. However, his health is one of the biggest question marks surrounding him, as he has played more than 47 games in a season only once in his career. Currently, he is out with an ankle injury.
If the teams were to try to do the deal, it would be relatively straightforward in terms of salary matching; although the Clippers are hard-capped at the first apron, Harden makes just over $1 million more than Ball and could, in theory, be traded for each other without any other players involved.
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