Charlotte Hornets finally have reasons to be positive about their future
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Saturday 21 December 2019 16:20, UK
The Charlotte Hornets have been mired in mediocrity for a long time but this season has given them reasons to feel positive about their future, writes Sky Sports NBA analyst Mark Deeks.
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Sixth once. Seventh twice. A ninth and three tenths. Couple of 11ths, couple of 12ths, couple of 14ths, a 13th and a last. In the 15 years since the Charlotte Hornets franchise was reborn as the Bobcats, those have been their final annual placings in the Eastern Conference.
Only three playoff appearances in 15 seasons. Only three times cracking the 40-win mark. Never winning more than 48. Never being even nearly competitive at the top of the conference. No playoff series victories, and two first-round sweeps. When your best-ever season is finishing third in the division, sixth in conference and losing in seven games in the first round to the Miami Heat, you do not have a storied recent history.
The past does not dictate the present, but it does inform how we feel about it. With this in mind, then, there are reasons to feel positive about this year's edition of the Hornets.
The 2019/20 Charlotte Hornets are not going to buck the trend and become competitive. They are currently in the ninth position in the Eastern Conference with a 13-18 record, half a game behind the Orlando Magic for the eighth seed, three and-a-half games behind the Brooklyn Nets for seventh, and unassailably far behind the front six. The Detroit Pistons are only half a game behind them, and the Chicago Bulls only one game further back of that. The Hornets might make the playoffs, or they might not. It is in the balance.
But regardless of whether they do or not, they are having a relatively good year.
If a team is going to miss or barely make the playoffs, there are good ways and bad ways to do it. Hitherto, the Hornets have been doing it in the bad way. Buoyed by the relative success of the 2016 season, a significant overspend on the players on that team has hamstrung them in all the years hence; big contracts to the likes of Marvin Williams, Cody Zeller and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, plus a particularly enormous one to Nicolas Batum, saw the team be unable to add sufficient quality to their lone superstar, Kemba Walker. For years, Walker was carrying the team while only being the sixth-highest paid player, a testament to how good of value he was yet also how wasted that great value turned out to be, every year.
The Hornets were old, pricey and without upside. They routinely would lose close games because they had no one other than Walker who could do anything consistently in the half-court, and opponents could play them accordingly. Jeremy Lamb briefly provided some respite alongside Kemba, but they were never able to overcome the talent disparity and offensive reliance upon Kemba, and nor did all that expenditure even get them that good of a defense.
By and large, this is still true. Indeed, while their .419 winning percentage is roughly on a par with what has gone before, their overall metrics have dropped off. The Hornets are ranked 23rd in offensive rating and 24th in defensive rating, and have an expected win-loss record of 10-21.
They tend to win by the tiniest of margins or get absolutely drubbed - they have only won one game by more than 10 points, have won eight by seven or less, and have 10 double-digit losses. If anything, the record flatters them, and the aforementioned playoff chances may be smaller than they first appear.
However, it matters not how well they perform this year so much as it does how they do it. And specifically, who performs well.
The Hornets have not gone on the full rebuild that many of their peers at the bottom at the NBA either are doing or have done. They have not been able to; they could not be a fire sale when they had so few sellable assets. Walker and Lamb were both unrestricted free agents this past summer, and although Terry Rozier was returned in a sign-and-trade for Walker, it was very much a "best we can get" move for him.
However, over the last few months, they nevertheless have been able to construct the makings of a young core with less than premium draft assets. The Hornets finished last season with the 16th-oldest roster in the NBA, but after their reshuffle over the summer, they are now down to 23rd oldest. And that number is being bolstered by incumbent veterans who no longer feature much.
Take for example the Utah Jazz. Their average age of 26.8 is good for the joint sixth-oldest mark in the league with the San Antonio Spurs, yet their playing rotation is older than that. Just last night, the seven healthy players who did not play in their game featured five rookies, a third-year player and Dante Exum (who, despite being in his sixth NBA season, is still only 24). Their playing rotation is therefore much older than their roster.
By contrast, of the 10 leading minute-getters on the Hornets this year, only Bismack Biyombo, Cody Zeller and Marvin Williams are older than 27. And two of those have expiring contracts, very unlikely to stay with the team beyond this year.
Chief among these young pieces has been the breakout sensation that is Devonte' Graham, who is averaging 19.1 points and 7.5 assists per game on the season. Where last year he was a fairly ineffectual backup to Walker, he has now proven to be one of the most deadly shooters in the league.
Graham is averaging 40.3 per cent from three-point range on slightly more than nine attempts per game; the great fear during the moribund years was always what to do after Kemba left, yet Devonte' has answered that question. He is good, he is easy to root for, and he has provided hope and positivity single-handed.
Elsewhere, 2019 lottery pick PJ Washington started out with a bang and has proven to be further ahead of the curve offensively and as a shooter than expected. Also holding his own on defense, he has ended Williams's monopoly on the power forward spot, and added some youth, athleticism, versatility and hope himself.
Miles Bridges is streaky but growing as a two-way player on the wing, and although there remains nothing reliable about the feast-or-famine way that Malik Monk plies his scoring trade, there still exists plenty of talent within him as a shot-creator in the Jamal Crawford mode.
There is still substantial work to do to reshape the roster. The contract of Batum, in particular, is an anchor - the Frenchman has always been reticent to try and score, but has become a pastiche of himself this year, averaging only 5.4 points per 36 minutes while being paid $25.6m.
Given Charlotte has never been a free agency destination, the fact that the sizeable contracts of Williams, Biyombo and Kidd-Gilchrist (seemingly no longer a part of the future himself, having been outside of the rotation all year) does not mean the team will be able to acquire star talent once the money is cleared. And unless Washington and Graham continue to grow in ways that belie their draft status, there are no future stars on this team.
There is however hope. There are reasons to be confident about the direction that the team is heading in, and about those who are taking them there. And once the payroll is reduced, there will at least be options and flexibility for the first time in a while.
For a long time, the Hornets have been in a quagmire, not progressing in the short term and having to nibble around the edges to try and improve, normally unsuccessfully.
But now, they are getting somewhere. Finally.
