Due to the nature of the NBA schedule and the expectations of teams across the league, the list of teams who had the opportunity to see LaMelo Ball in person with the Illawarra Hawks is short. Only the Charlotte Hornets and general manager Mitch Kupchak had been publicly known to have scouted Ball, but a recent comment from Pistons Senior Advisor of Basketball Operations Ed Stefanski indicated another team is on that list.
During a radio interview on 97.1 The Ticket on Wednesday, Stefanski indicated that Detroit had a scout watch Ball during the NBL season, a rarity among NBA teams.
“I would just say, that young man has a lot of talent. There’s no question about it. And we were able to see him early, we had a scout there for a while overseas in Australia to watch. So we were fortunate there, where some teams were going to go over in the spring to see him play and obviously that’s not going to happen now.”
The Warriors would have joined the Hornets and Pistons as teams to have seen Ball up close but general manager Bob Myers’ trip to Australia turned into a fact-finding mission after Ball’s season ended prematurely due to injury.
Currently, Detroit has the fifth-best draft lottery odds at the No. 1 pick and figure to be in the running for Ball. From a team construction standpoint, Ball would fit perfectly into a Pistons team that finally took steps toward rebuilding before and immediately after the trade deadline by trading Andre Drummond and agreeing to buyouts with Reggie Jackson and Markieff Morris.
While Derrick Rose is under contract for next season, he would be an expiring deal and, as an aging point guard, could be a stop-gap as Ball transitions into the league. He could also serve as a veteran mentor for Ball as well.
Out of the teams at the top of the lottery, few would be a better on-court fit for Ball than the Pistons.