CHARLOTTE, N.C. — LaMelo Ball is the Charlotte Hornets’ once and future point guard, a razzle-dazzle rookie who quickly morphed into the team’s most important long-term player.
But Ball isn’t on the floor right now, due to a broken wrist that will keep him out more than a month. And in the meantime, Devonte Graham has a golden opportunity to remind us again how good he can be.
Graham tried on a superhero cape Sunday in Charlotte’s 101-97 home overtime loss to Phoenix and found that it fit except for the final button.
Graham scored 30 points, his most of this season. He almost single-handedly brought the Hornets back in the final two minutes of regulation. Graham scored eight straight points to erase all of a 90-82 deficit in those last two minutes with Ball happily nodding from the sideline (he couldn’t applaud, because his wrist was in a cast).
Then, after Charlotte had tied the score at 90-all and had the ball again in the final three seconds of the fourth quarter, Graham rose for a 25-foot 3-pointer.
This one bounced, bounced again … and bounced away.
That turned out to be Charlotte’s best chance to win. The Hornets (23-22) never led in overtime and fell to Phoenix (31-14), one of the best teams in the Western Conference.
Still, Graham was impressive in front of 3,850 socially distanced fans in the Spectrum Center for a Sunday matinee.
And the Hornets — about to embark on a six-game road trip that won’t have them home again until April 11 — are 3-1 since Ball broke his wrist. Graham has moved right back into his old starting role.
“Since LaMelo went out, he’s been fantastic,” Hornets coach James Borrego said of Graham, who grew up in Raleigh and was a star for Broughton High before going to Kansas for college (after first committing to Appalachian State, but that’s another story).
From backup to starter to backup and now to starter again, Graham’s three-year NBA career has long been defined by his ability to find the basket. Last season, before LaMelo, Graham started and was Charlotte’s leading scorer, at 18.2 points per game.
This season his numbers are down due to Ball’s emergence and Gordon Hayward’s arrival. On a fully healthy Charlotte team, he no longer starts. But on Sunday his value was evident again. Terry Rozier, normally Charlotte’s signature fourth-quarter threat, was instead torrid in the first quarter and then could hardly make a shot after that. Hayward was 4-for-15. Malik Monk was hurt and didn’t play. Charlotte was running out of options fast.
Graham, though, was getting hot, much like he occasionally did last season when given time and space to kindle a fire. He stayed step-for-step with Phoenix star Devin Booker for much of the game — Booker ended up with 35 points compared to Graham’s 30.
“He’s been a starter in this league,” Borrego said of Graham. “He’s not fazed by this moment. He just picked up where he left off before. He’s been a major part of us winning games since Melo has been out.”
Yet it wasn’t quite enough.
Borrego went all out for this one, playing his starters huge minutes (P.J. Washington played 44 of them, yet somehow went scoreless but had 12 rebounds; Rozier played 44 minutes; Graham played 39). The heavy-minutes gamble failed, as the Hornets — who had beaten the Suns in Phoenix in February, with both Ball and Monk instrumental in the win — couldn’t quite get there.
Charlotte remains in good shape in the playoff race, though, tied for fifth in the Eastern Conference before Sunday night’s games.
And Graham, foisted back into the starting role, is going to be fine. He can’t thread 70-foot passes through two defenders like Ball can, but he’s found his 3-point shot again and he’s comfortable running a team. A far bigger problem for the Hornets is their lack of production and rim protection at center.
As for that last-second potential game-winning shot by Graham in regulation, it really did have a chance.
“I thought I got a pretty good look,” Graham said. “I was just a little short.”
So were the Hornets Sunday. But at least Graham reintroduced himself to everybody.
