Ex-NBA player continues weird tirade against LaMelo Ball

The NBA media seems to have a weird obsession with Charlotte Hornets guard LaMelo Ball. On the one hand, the narrative is often that he is not a winning player and won't ever change the Hornets. On the other hand, he's constantly put in trade talks that give him to playoff teams that need a player who is often compared to a circus and criticized for his lack of winning.

The former is the more troubling narrative. Ball hasn't won yet, but can anyone really place the ineptitude of the Hornets on one player? Apparently, people can and do, perhaps none more so than Chandler Parsons, who is picking up his strange and never-ending crusade again already this year.

Chandler Parsons can't stop talking bad about LaMelo Ball

Maybe it's because LaMelo Ball is already a better player than Chandler Parsons really ever was, but the former NBA player seems to talk about the Hornets guard routinely on his podcast with Lou Williams.

🎙️ @ChandlerParsons: "A guy like (LaMelo Ball) won't ever fully get the flowers he deserves until he wins, and they're nowhere near winning."

"He's not a Top 5 point guard, and they're gonna be a Bottom 5 team..." 🙄pic.twitter.com/UYDPTW2L89
— r/CharlotteHornets (@HornetsReddit) October 24, 2025

In Parsons' defense, he does seem to be saying with his latest take that Ball is better than people think, but he still delivered it in such a way that made it insulting. "A guy like LaMelo won't ever fully get the flowers he deserves until he wins," Parsons said. "They're nowhere near winning."

Parsons must've missed the opening night dismantling of the Brooklyn Nets. The Nets are bad, but that suggests that the Hornets are far from the caliber of team the Nets are, which by default puts them much closer to this fabled "winning" tier everyone talks about.

Parsons continued giving Ball backhanded compliments. "He's going to score a ton of points, he's electric, he's very fun to watch. He's super talented," the former NBA player said. "He is must-watch TV, and no one's watching."

He did admit it's a "Charlotte Hornets problem," but that doesn't take away from the fact that Parsons' entire point here is that Ball isn't a winning player and that the Hornets are apparently not even close to being a successful team.

And to top it all off, Parsons said, "He's not a top-five point guard, and they're going to be a bottom-five team, so it's hard to get the accolades and respect you want when you're not winning games consistently."

Ball can only control so much, but it does appear that the Hornets have begun to surround him with enough capable NBA talent that he should be able to have more success soon. That clearly makes it a team issue and not a player issue, but perhaps then people will stop with this silly criticism.

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