[OC] The LaMelo Effect: Hornets rookie Kon Knueppel is shooting 51.3% from 3 and 70.2 TS% overall when on the floor with LaMelo Ball this season. Several other Hornets see similar jumps.
LaMelo Ball’s numbers might not jump off the page, he’s playing a modest amount of minutes (27.6mpg) and putting up 19ppg, 7.5apg on slightly inefficient shooting splits, but the Hornets have never felt a greater impact from his play than this year. Just about every player in the rotation is seeing a sizeable increase in scoring efficiency due to his abilities as a floor general (and Charlotte’s lack of one when he goes to the bench)
The highlights:
Rookie Kon Knueppel’s shooting numbers are simply hilarious when paired with LaMelo. it’s a sample size of 822 minutes. He’s still good without LaMelo, but like… normal good. Jokic is currently shooting 0.1 TS% better than that .702 figure.
Brandon Miller sees an enormous jump in his shooting at the rim. This tracks, as Miller is pretty terrible at creating his own offense towards the rim and LaMelo finds him a lot for lobs and other easy looks. He’s the only rotation player that doesn’t shoot better from 3 with Melo on the floor, and this could easily be noise.
Miles Bridges should basically never play without a floor general. Unsurprisingly Diabate also relies on Melo pretty heavily.
Collin Sexton should have shared the floor more with LaMelo prior to the trade. The sample size is likely not large enough to be statistically significant, but the eye test showed that pairing was potent at times due to Sexton’s rim pressure, and that Sexton was struggling running the second unit in Charlotte.
Salaun and Green definitely do not have enough shots to get anything meaningful… but Green does look a bit better when he isn’t asked to do anything but catch and shoot open shots from the corner… and LaMelo is the one guy that does that consistently. Kalkbrenner’s role of scoring only on the easiest shots at the rim doesn’t change much.
All stats sourced from https://databallr.com/StatLineShift
| MELO ON | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Player | PTS/75 | TS% | 3P% | FG%RIM | +/- | MP |
| KON KNUEPPEL | 20.8 | 70.2 | 51.3 | 59.6 | 6.5 | 822 |
| BRANDON MILLER | 23.2 | 56.3 | 33.1 | 74.2 | 10.7 | 665 |
| MILES BRIDGES | 20.6 | 62 | 37.7 | 70.8 | 5.2 | 847 |
| COLLIN SEXTON | 24.7 | 70.3 | 53.3 | 78.1 | 5.3 | 251 |
| SION JAMES | 9.6 | 64.9 | 40.9 | 63.2 | -0.2 | 364 |
| TIDJANE SALAUN | 12.2 | 65 | 44 | 71.4 | 6.1 | 174 |
| JOSH GREEN | 11.3 | 77.2 | 57.9 | 12.6 | 136 | |
| RYAN KALKBRENNER | 11.1 | 73.1 | 76.1 | -2.7 | 395 | |
| MOUSSA DIABATE | 12.4 | 70.4 | 76.3 | 14.9 | 659 | |
| MELO OFF | ||||||
| Player | PTS/75 | TS% | 3P% | FG%RIM | +/- | MP |
| KON KNUEPPEL | 22.1 | 59.9 | 35.5 | 65.8 | -2.8 | 848 |
| BRANDON MILLER | 26.9 | 55.3 | 41.6 | 43.5 | -3.4 | 421 |
| MILES BRIDGES | 21.4 | 52.2 | 28.9 | 57.9 | -5.5 | 840 |
| COLLIN SEXTON | 22.8 | 58.8 | 33 | 69.1 | -3.9 | 686 |
| SION JAMES | 8.4 | 49.7 | 33.3 | 41.8 | -1.8 | 911 |
| TIDJANE SALAUN | 16.2 | 63.9 | 44.4 | 69.4 | -0.5 | 323 |
| JOSH GREEN | 10.7 | 59.6 | 37.7 | 71.4 | 5.3 | 322 |
| RYAN KALKBRENNER | 14.4 | 77.4 | 82.6 | -2.9 | 550 | |
| MOUSSA DIABATE | 12.7 | 61.4 | 65.6 | -5.9 | 580 | |
| MELO IMPACT | ||||||
| Player | PTS/75 | TS% | 3P% | FG%RIM | +/- | |
| KON KNUEPPEL | -1.3 | 10.3 | 15.8 | -6.2 | 9.3 | |
| BRANDON MILLER | -3.7 | 1 | -8.5 | 30.7 | 14.1 | |
| MILES BRIDGES | -0.8 | 9.8 | 8.8 | 12.9 | 10.7 | |
| COLLIN SEXTON | 1.9 | 11.5 | 20.3 | 9 | 9.2 | |
| SION JAMES | 1.2 | 15.2 | 7.6 | 21.4 | 1.6 | |
| TIDJANE SALAUN | -4 | 1.1 | -0.4 | 2 | 6.6 | |
| JOSH GREEN | 0.6 | 17.6 | 20.2 | -71.4 | 7.3 | |
| RYAN KALKBRENNER | -3.3 | -4.3 | 0 | -6.5 | 0.2 | |
| MOUSSA DIABATE | -0.3 | 9 | 0 | 10.7 | 20.8 |
^Table ^formatting ^by ^ExcelToReddit