LaMelo Ball is moving on from trip gate.
Ball — in the middle of a resurgent season for the 44-win Hornets — was at the center of a controversy on Tuesday, when he tripped up the Heat captain Bam Adebayo, who took a hard fall on his back in the second quarter and missed the rest of the game.
The do-or-die affair ended in overtime, with Charlotte winning 127-126.
Ball, on Friday before a play-in game against the Magic, said there are no hard feelings stemming from the play, where he appeared to grab Adebayo’s leg, either attempting to break his own fall or — as some suspected on social media — deliberately attempting to drop the all-world defender.
“I’m kind of worried about this game today,” Ball said after the Hornets’ morning shootaround on Friday.
Ball, who was not called for a foul on the play, was fined $60,000 following the incident, $35,000 for the foul — which was then retroactively upgraded to a flagrant 2 — and $25,000 for cursing in a postgame interview live on Prime Video.
“But like I said, I try to apologize and everything,” Ball continued. “Just look out for Bam. Mainly just make sure he’s OK. We don’t want nobody hurt in this league ever. So as long as he’s good, it’s helped [ease] my mind a little.”
Adebayo told reporters earlier this week that he and Ball hadn’t spoken about the incident.
“It didn’t happen,” Adebayo said regarding a possible conversation with Ball postgame. “By that time, I was in the shower trying to figure out what I was going to do next. Obviously, everything happened all at once, and I wanted to be out there. At some point, I’ll see him again, and we’ll have that conversation, and we’ll move on.”
Notably, Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra was heated in his postgame presser after the ordeal.
“I don’t think it’s cute. I don’t think it’s funny. I think it’s a stupid play. It’s a dangerous play,” Spoelstra said Tuesday after the game. “I don’t think that belongs in the game. Tripping guys, those shenanigans. He should have been thrown out of the game for that. … There’s just no place in the game for that.”
Ball added that the conversation will happen at some point.
“Whenever I see him, [I will] try to talk to him,” Ball said. “After the game, I tried to talk to him. I was waiting by his locker room and just talking to the security guard, waiting for him. But he said he was in the shower, and it’s a tough game. I mean, you lose, you don’t really like talking to people. So I just gave him his space pretty much and he said he’d get with me. There was a lot going on.”
The Hornets and Magic are suiting up to determine the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference and who will face the No. 1 seed Pistons in a first-round series beginning on Sunday.
