CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There was a remarkable symmetry to what happened Monday, an only-in-Charlotte kind of day that marked the ascent of one sports king and the descent of another.
On Monday morning, Carolina quarterback Cam Newton gave what was likely his final press conference as a Panther after playing a total of two plays in his final two games.
On Monday evening, Charlotte Hornets point guard LaMelo Ball hit another milestone in his already spectacular career, breaking a 99-99 tie with 15.4 seconds left against Milwaukee with a “how’d-he-do-that” sideways floater — the critical basket in another big home win.
The king is gone; long live the king.
The 20-year-old Ball has done a lot of things already, but he hadn’t done that before. It was the first time Ball had scored a go-ahead field goal in the last minute of regulation in his 86-game NBA career.
“I ain’t gonna lie,” Ball said later, flashing a grin and explaining how playing “up” against grown men as a kid had forced him to develop exactly the sort of shot he hit for the game-winner. “I always did floaters my whole life — going left, right, straight, forward, backward, any type of way. I felt like it was a good shot. So yeah, I took it.”
“Sometimes you just have to tip your hat,” said Milwaukee guard Wesley Matthews, who defended Ball well on the play but still gave up the basket. “That is just a hell of a play by a hell of a player.”
Opponents used to say things like that about Newton, but he became an afterthought in the final two Panther games after being rehired in November in a last-ditch attempt to salvage the team’s season. Instead, a healthy Newton stood on the sideline and watched the final two games of the Panthers’ season-closing, seven-game losing streak.
Newton is 32 years old — 12 years older than Ball — and he has done just about everything in the NFL, short of winning a Super Bowl title. And he wants to keep playing — although if he comes back this time, he wants to play for a winner even if that means being a backup.
“I’m not coming back for no 5-12,” Newton said, referencing the Panthers’ record in 2021.
The Newton years
For a long time in the 2010s, Newton was the biggest star in town and the Panthers dwarfed the Hornets in terms of popularity and success. The Panthers made the playoffs four times in seven years from 2011-17 and got to the Super Bowl once.
But now the tables have turned.
It is the Hornets who are frequently drawing sellout crowds in Charlotte and the Panthers whose lower deck at Bank of America Stadium was often half-filled with fans from the opposing team this past season. It is the Hornets who just went 2-0 against defending NBA champion Milwaukee over a three-day span at home and the Panthers who didn’t win a home game for the final 15 weeks of the NFL season.
It is the Hornets who have surrounded Ball with a bunch of playmakers who score in bunches — Terry Rozier, Miles Bridges and Gordon Hayward — and the Panthers who were in the bottom 5 in nearly every offensive category in 2021.
And it is Ball, dripping with charisma on his chosen playing field in the way Newton always has, who is stirring the drink.
“He makes us different,” Hornets coach James Borrego said of Ball.
Ball’s game-winner
On the go-ahead play Monday night, Ball threw the ball to Terry Rozier. This was normal. Rozier has generally been Charlotte’s closer during Ball’s two seasons here because he’s so good at creating his shot. But Rozier, surveying the defense, didn’t like what he saw, threw the basketball back and signaled Ball to take over.
“I wasn’t really feeling it,” Rozier said. “So I let him go to work.”
Starting 40 feet from the basket on the far right, Ball was isolated on Matthews. It took him five dribbles to get free — two between his legs, followed by a jab step right and then a quick cut left.
The shot was the most difficult part. Ball was flying sideways through the paint when he let go of the ball.
“On a lot of those movements, LaMelo has an uncanny ability to be going 100 mph and then be poised when he raises up to shoot,” Borrego said.
That’s what happened this time. The release was soft and the ball whispered through the net as the crowd of 14,253 exploded. Milwaukee turned the ball over with a chance to tie, Bridges hit two clinching free throws and that was that.
Charlotte won, 103-99, and made it to the halfway point of the NBA season with a record of 22-19 — the first time they’ve been at least three games above .500 at the midpoint since 2000-01. (The Hornets next play Wednesday in Philadelphia, against a 76ers team that has beaten them 16 times in a row).
So once again, Charlotte has a hot team and a young star to lead it. LaMelo has replaced Cam as the most highlighted, imitated and enthralling athlete in Charlotte.
We knew that already. But Monday made it clearer than it’s ever been.
Long live the new king.
