Can playing Devonte Graham with Terry Rozier make the Charlotte Hornets competitive?
Should the Rozier-or-Graham backcourt decision become a Rozier-and-Graham decision?
If ever there was a season for the Charlotte Hornets to experiment, it’s this one. The record is going to be bad no matter how these players are configured. If this is about youth and development, then ride with the young guy showing the most promise.
That guy so far is Devonte Graham.
The backup point guard, a second-round pick in the 2018 draft, has blown up in the first two games: He leads the Hornets in scoring with a 23.5-point average. He is shooting a stunning 12-of-16 from 3-point range. On a team that can’t avoid turnovers, he is still making three assists for every give-away he commits
And he’s outplaying the starter at his position, Terry Rozier, by a significant margin.
So then you might ask, as the Hornets leave on a four-game West Coast trip, why not replace Rozier in the starting lineup with Graham? My answer would be Rozier is still one of the better players on this team — particularly defensively — so why not maximize what you do have?
Don’t pull either Rozier or shooting guard Dwayne Bacon out of the starting lineup, but do play Graham and Rozier as much together as you can.
That idea was always in coach James Borrego’s head. After a 121-99 home loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves, Borrego said he anticipates going more with Graham and Rozier together, partially in reaction to losing Nic Batum for a couple of weeks with a broken finger.
“We can play them together,” Borrego said. “We can play Terry off the ball some with Te’ out there. We’ll look at that lineup. We played it some tonight.”
Two points together
Playing two point guards together is hardly foreign to Borrego’s vision of NBA lineups. He often closed games last season with Kemba Walker and Tony Parker on the court. Obviously, Rozier-Graham isn’t Walker-Parker, but the latitude to experiment is one of the few pluses of the Hornets’ deep rebuild.
Graham played off the ball some in college at Kansas, and now that he’s improved as a jump-shooter, he doesn’t always need to be the point to be effective. Rozier is a solid defender. So while it’s not ideal to ask either one to defend shooting guards on a regular basis, it’s also not preposterous.
“We’ve still got to work on it — it’s definitely a work-in-progress when we get in there together,” Graham said.
“I’m very comfortable (defending shooting guards). Whatever coach and them need me to do, I can do it. Whoever they need me to guard, I’m really comfortable.”
Rozier, who finished with 11 points and 10 assists despite foul trouble, said he, too, would be fine exploring the new pairing.
Brutal defense
Tinkering with backcourt minutes is worth trying, but as Graham noted, no lineup will be productive enough until the Hornets starting defending.
“It doesn’t matter who is in the game if we’re not getting stops,” Graham said. “Stops in order to do anything.”
The numbers through two games are brutal. The Hornets have allowed an average of 123 points and are being outrebounded by an average of 11 per game.
“We don’t have a defensive mentality right now, we don’t have a rebounding mentality right now,” Borrego said. “We’ve got to clean that up.”
Clean-up is going to be a frustrating chore on a numerous Hornets fronts this season. One of the few uplifts right now is Graham; gotta find a means to optimize that.
This story was originally published October 26, 2019 at 8:44 AM.
