{"id":117536,"date":"2025-01-12T12:51:34","date_gmt":"2025-01-12T17:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=117536"},"modified":"2025-01-12T12:51:34","modified_gmt":"2025-01-12T17:51:34","slug":"lamelo-ball-shooting-shots-at-a-rate-not-seen-since-wilt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/01\/12\/lamelo-ball-shooting-shots-at-a-rate-not-seen-since-wilt\/","title":{"rendered":"LaMelo Ball Shooting Shots At A Rate Not Seen Since Wilt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Charlotte Hornets currently own one of the league\u2019s worst records in the NBA at 8-27. Barring a miracle, it will be the ninth-straight season that the team will miss the playoffs. While Charlotte\u2019s wins come rather infrequently, they have a player who is averaging just shy of 30 points per contest. That would be 23-year-old <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/b\/ballla01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">LaMelo Ball<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The point guard has the ball in his hands quite often as evidenced by his league-leading 38.7% usage rate. That would be the <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/leaders\/usg_pct_season.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">fifth-highest usage rate<\/a> in NBA history. While he does tally a good amount of assists, he certainly isn\u2019t shy about chucking up his fair share of shots. It\u2019s to the point that he\u2019s shooting more frequently this season than anyone since <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/c\/chambwi01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wilt Chamberlain<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>LaMelo Ball Shooting Shots At A Rate Not Seen Since Wilt<\/h2>\n<h3>LaMelo Ball Shooting At A Historic Rate<\/h3>\n<p>On the season, Ball has averaged 29.9 points per outing. Selected third overall in the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2020\/11\/18\/lamelo-ball-selected-third-overall-in-the-2020-nba-draft\/\" target=\"_self\">2020 NBA Draft<\/a>, Ball has been available for 24 of Charlotte\u2019s first 35 games. Calf and wrist injuries have taken him out of the lineup 11 times.<\/p>\n<p>Through those 24 games, Ball has attempted on average 24.5 field goal attempts playing 33.8 minutes a game. Those totals are 589 shot attempts while playing 810 minutes. Do the math, and that is 0.727 shot attempts per minute for the 6-foot-7 point guard. He has been bombs away from beyond the arc as 313 of his field goal attempts are three-point tries.<\/p>\n<p>In case you didn\u2019t realize, that means he is attempting shots at a crazy rate. It would be a rate that hasn\u2019t been seen since the mid-1960s (<a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/j\/jordami01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Michael Jordan<\/a> had an oh-so-slightly higher rate in 1985-86, but he only played in 18 games). The stat was brought up by Jorge Sierra of HoopsHype.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"bluesky-embed\" data-bluesky-uri=\"at:\/\/did:plc:i732zeq2rkbq2db66afktt5i\/app.bsky.feed.post\/3lfk2wv7ouc22\" data-bluesky-cid=\"bafyreidy5rsfsi7wbyyrvfyvcplgd6uy4qmidwhycvac3vtjcncjrydrpm\">\n<p lang=\"en\">LaMelo Ball is taking the most shots per minute since Wilt Chamberlain in 1965 \ud83e\udd2fWilt Chamberlain (1961-62): 0.814Elgin Baylor (1961-62): 0.746Wilt Chamberlain (1964-65): 0.731Wilt Chamberlain (1962-63): 0.728LAMELO BALL (2024-25): 0.727Michael Jordan (1985-86): 0.727<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; <a  href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/did:plc:i732zeq2rkbq2db66afktt5i?ref_src=embed\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">HoopsHype (@hoopshypeofficial.bsky.social)<\/a> <a  href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/did:plc:i732zeq2rkbq2db66afktt5i\/post\/3lfk2wv7ouc22?ref_src=embed\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2025-01-12T10:59:44.086Z<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/embed.bsky.app\/static\/embed.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Wilt Chamberlain\u2019s One Of Many Records<\/h3>\n<p>When it comes to who put up the most ridiculous seasonal averages ever, Wilt Chamberlain takes the cake. The 7-foot-1 legendary center won the scoring title in each of his first six seasons and was named league MVP four times.<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to shots per minute, Chamberlain is also just one of two players ever to have a higher average than Ball thus far in 2024-25. Playing for the San Francisco Warriors in 1961-62, Chamberlain had the highest single-season scoring average of 50.4 points. That season, he also attempted 0.814 shots per minute, highest in league history. He also has the third and fourth-highest shot attempt rates ever (0.731 per minute in 1964-65 and 0.728 in 1962-63).<\/p>\n<p>The only other player with a higher rate of shots attempted in a season is <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/b\/bayloel01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Elgin Baylor<\/a>. During his fourth season in 1961-62, he attempted 0.746 shots per minute in 1961-62. He did just play 48 games during that season. Chamberlain played in 80, 80, and 73 contests in the three seasons mentioned.<\/p>\n<p>Ball can play a maximum of 71 games in 2024-25, which of course would require him to not miss any more games this season. Injuries have played a substantial role in derailing his career at times, as <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2023\/12\/05\/nba-rumors-bam-adebayo-return-date-lamelo-ball-and-lonnie-walker-plus-more\/\" target=\"_self\">Ball only appeared<\/a> in 58 total games over the previous two seasons. We will see how many shot attempts he gets up in their next game which comes Sunday night at the Phoenix Suns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Charlotte Hornets currently own one of the league\u2019s worst records in the NBA at 8-27. Barring a miracle, it will be the ninth-straight season that the team will miss the playoffs. While Charlotte\u2019s wins come rather infrequently, they have a player who is averaging just shy of 30 points per contest. That would be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5060,"featured_media":117570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,7,62,3],"tags":[2048,823,2014],"class_list":["post-117536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-hornets","category-nba","category-news","tag-elgin-baylor","tag-lamelo-ball","tag-wilt-chamberlain"],"modified_by":"Kenny Kluska","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5060"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117536"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117560,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117536\/revisions\/117560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}