Sports

LaMelo Ball Explained Why He Hasn't Apologized to Bam Adebayo Yet

By Stephen Douglas Sports Illustrated

LaMelo Ball will take the court Friday night as the Hornets try to beat the Magic in the play-in and earn the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs. There was some concern that Ball might be suspended by the league after he tripped Bam Adebayo during the 9-10 game, causing the Heat star to fall and hurt his back and miss the final 35 minutes of the game.

The league decided to hand Ball a retroactive Flagrant 2 and fine instead, so he will be in the lineup tonight with the season on the line. Ball was asked about the incident during the team shootaround on Friday morning and seemed largely unconcerned since Adebayo did not suffer a serious injury.

"Explain my thoughts? I don't really got no thoughts right now, I'm kind of worried about this game today," said Ball. "But like I said, I tried to apologize and everything. Just look out for Bam. The main thing is make sure he's OK. We don't want nobody hurt in this league ever so as long as he's good he's helped my mind a little."

As for Ball's mindset, he said that he was having no trouble focusing on the upcoming game.

"My head stay clear, so it's never a problem," he said.

After the game on Tuesday, Ball had said that he would seek out Adebayo to apologize, but the Miami star said in his exit press conference on Thursday that he had not heard from him. Again, Ball wasn't worried.

"Whenever I see him I try to talk to him," Ball explained. "I mean, after the game I tried to talk to him. I was waiting by his locker and everything, or his locker room and just talked to his security guard waiting for him, but they said he was in the shower and everything. It's a tough game. You lose you don't really like talking to people so I gave him his space pretty much and he said he'd get with me. There's a lot going on and stuff."

When someone brought up the previous time that Ball had grabbed Adebayo's leg, he said it was "just basketball" and that Adebayo knew there was "nothing going on." Here's that play from two seasons ago:

It sounds like both sides would like to resolve the issue, which is good, but being caught on video doing the same reckless action multiple times does seem to suggest Ball needs to make some adjustments to what he's doing before someone gets seriously hurt.

Ball is right to note that you never want to see anyone in the NBA get hurt. As someone who has missed a large chunk of games in his career, you'd think he'd be extra cautious of other players. Ball has missed 179 of a possible 482 games in first six seasons. Doing something the league views as worthy of a Flagrant 2 is inexcusable, even if the guy whose leg he has grabbed twice is willing to forgive him.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as LaMelo Ball Explained Why He Hasn't Apologized to Bam Adebayo Yet.

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