LaMelo and Lonzo Ball have been on fire lately, and both reached high marks on Friday night

While the prevailing feelings are that LaMelo Ball is on its way to stardom, while the starship sailed the old nuisance Lonzo Ball, you may be surprised to learn that the two are having quite similar seasons.

Throw away the different tones they’re covered with – LaMelo, the shiny new toy with a million miles advantage, Lonzo the one we stopped playing with after realizing it’s not as fun as we thought – and just focus in the current production.

LaMelo is a better passer (and not just because the numbers say so), Lonzo is a better defender, both are inconsistent pitchers, both are standing out a lot in the last five games and both were fantastic on Friday night. We’ll start with LaMelo, with an emphasis on begin, as Hornets coach James Borrego did keep him in the top five after Terry Rozier came back from injury.

On Friday, although he suffered a loss to the fiery Jazz, LaMelo set his career record of 34 points out of 14 out of 27 shots, including 4 out of 9 deep, to go with eight assists, four rebounds, two steals. ball and a block. The goods:

Observe all the different ways that LaMelo is impacting the game – in the transition, picking and rolling, reaching the rim, backing 3s, catching and shooting 3s, internal passes, drive-and-chicks for the pitchers, defenses on the defensive side, hitting and pushing, etc. It’s easy to see LaMelo’s confidence and comfort, both overflowing to start, growing with each game.

The two main doubts people had about LaMelo when the Hornets took him third overall in the 2020 draft were: A) Could he shoot 3 consistently? and B) would defenses respect you enough as a top scorer, especially as a finisher, to unlock your passing gifts? The 33 percent 3-point clip suggests a lack of consistency, but it’s coming.

In his last five games, LaMelo is shooting almost six points out of 3 per game and hitting them at 39.3 percent. Overall, he’s been getting more than 15 shots per game in the last five (making 51.9% of them), which equates to 22.5 points per night.

As for defenses, having to respect him as a finisher instead of being able to wait and throw him for the pass, coming in on Friday, LaMelo hit 42% of his shots on the rim, which put him in the 92nd percentile between all shipowners, and he was converting those photos into a solid 58 percent (63rd percentile) index, according to Cleaning the Glass.

So yes, he is already proving to be a legitimate double threat when he gets on the track. Here’s how Rudy Gobert has to honor Ball’s ability to finish by going up for a shot block, which allows for an easy fall for Cody Zeller.

If Gobert knows that LaMelo wants to pass, he will probably stay on the ground and the pass will not be there. But he doesn’t know what LaMelo is going to do. Unpredictability is the name of today’s playmaker game, and LaMelo has it. In the clip below, LaMelo attracts the crowd again, this time pulling Derrick Favors away from Bismack Biyombo, who is waiting for the beautiful final pass.

This ability to reach the edge and end in traffic is, at this point, the biggest difference between LaMelo and Lonzo, the latter of which is a much more tentative marker from anywhere within the 3-point line. Upon entering Friday, Lonzo was giving only 19% of his shots on the edge, by CTG. Lonzo has become, for all intents and purposes, a more 3-and-D player, and that’s okay. Cementing your identity is the most important item on Lonzo’s to-do list at the moment. After struggling to start the season, he is also finding an important pace.

In his last five games, Lonzo is betting on eight points per game and gaining a 47.5 percent drop on his way to 17.2 points per game. On Friday, Lonzo was brilliant, scoring 18 of his 20 points – out of 7 out of 13 shots, including 5 out of 9 from the bottom – in the second half, including 13 in the fourth period, when the Pelicans defeated Pacers 114-113 .

Despite all those clutch buckets, it was Lonzo’s defense that sealed the game for New Orleans. Here’s how Myles Turner from Indiana seems to have an angle to the edge for a chance to win the potential game, just for Lonzo to spin quickly and go straight up to stone Turner with book upright.

A closer look:

Again, this is absolutely manual. Straight up, hands up, game over. What a move, from rotation to competition. It’s good for Lonzo, who has heard his name in exchange rumors in recent weeks and is playing for his first non-rookie contract this summer. It was a great night for the Ball brothers.