Hornets at midseason: Better for youth movement, but still a deep talent deficit
Here’s the problem the Charlotte Hornets face nightly this season:
No NBA team will play 48 minutes with optimal effort and execution. But the Hornets need to be a lot closer to that maximum effort than most teams, based on their limitations, and coach James Borrego is still searching for that “eureka” performance.
“Teams are going to make runs in this league, going to make shots. But can you be (closer to) perfect, and have more aggression, than your opponent can for 48 minutes?” Borrego said, reflecting on his team after 40 games.
“It’s human nature: You want to relax and let go and take a breath. And you can’t in this league, especially when your margin for error is so small.”
Game 41 for the Hornets — the midway point of an NBA season — came in Friday’s loss to the Utah Jazz at the outset of a four-game West Coast trip. The Hornets have played one of the most front-loaded schedules in the league; some teams have played as many as five fewer games than the Hornets so far.
What do we know about these guys that we didn’t know in September?
They’re fragile but feisty
Borrego said he knows this team is competitive, in a way he didn’t know during the summer. They often get down double digits in first quarters, and they’ve been blown out by striking margins at times (by 41 in Milwaukee and by 36 in Toronto). But they are resilient, too, which is a surprising trait for a team with young guys playing so many heavy minutes.
Arguably, the most surprising thing about this season is they are top-10 in the NBA in net rating in clutch time; the only team with a losing record in that top 10. The players who make them that way — Devonte Graham, Terry Rozier and P.J. Washington — are young keepers, not the veterans whose contracts are about to expire. That says good things about the rebuild general manager Mitch Kupchak is overseeing. Twelve of the Hornets’ 15 victories so far were decided in clutch time (the last five minutes of a game, when the margin is five points or less) including the recent overtime victory at Dallas.
Not nearly enough talent
Fifteen victories so far is probably a bit ahead of the pace fans anticipated this season. It’s also misleading without this context: Only two of those victories (home against the Indiana Pacers on Nov. 5 and at the Dallas Mavericks on Jan. 4) were against teams currently with winning records.
While they’ve been good at closing out winnable games, the gap between them and the Bucks, Celtics, Heat, Raptors and 76ers in the Eastern Conference might be even wider than it looked at the season’s outset. Other than pushing the Raptors (missing four rotation players) to overtime Wednesday, they have done nothing this season to suggest they’re closer to pursuing a top-4 seed in the East, which is what owner Michael Jordan has always called a key intermediate goal.
Stuck to a plan
Borrego said in September he was committed to playing young guys in any close decision on minutes. He has been true to that; four players in their first or second NBA seasons — Graham, Washington, Miles Bridges and Cody Martin — have combined to play more than 4,000 minutes already, or roughly half the total playing time this season.
That doesn’t mean Borrego ignores performance: One of the neat little stories of the first 40 games has been eight-season veteran Bismack Biyombo, in the last season on his contract, playing so well he has stuck as the starting center. Whether Biz is here or elsewhere next season, he has done himself lots of good in free agency next summer.
Rozier has worked out
There was abundant scrutiny — myself included — about the Hornets committing $57 million guaranteed over three year to acquire Terry Rozier, presumably to replace Kemba Walker.
It sure hasn’t worked out like the plan would have been in July, but it has worked out so far. Graham played so well early, and Dwayne Bacon struggled so much in 10 starts, that Borrego went with Graham and Rozier together as his starting backcourt. That made 6-1 Rozier the Hornets’ starting shooting guard, which is obviously less than ideal as far as matchups.
But it hasn’t been a major liability so far, and Rozier deserves lots of credit — for being both unselfish and adaptive to his team’s needs. Graham is the primary ballhandler most times, which makes Rozier a combo guard. That’s not particularly new for him — it’s what he did in college at Louisville — but he has embraced it and that’s made getting the most from Graham’s ascension easier.
So what’s next? Four things that must still be hashed out:
Washington and/or Bridges
Starting Washington at power forward and Bridges at small forward is acceptable now, when Borrego is still in exploration mode. But does that work for the long haul?
They are approximately the same size (about 6-7) and the optimal position for both is probably power forward (Borrego intended to start Bridges at power forward this season before Washington came up so fast in the preseason.) So are Washington and Bridges more complementary or redundant in the long run?
This doesn’t have to be decided immediately. But since Washington already looks like a keeper, Kupchak needs to figure out — while Bridges is still on that affordable rookie-scale contract — whether Bridges is a long-term piece or a potential trade commodity.
Shooting guard
The Hornets have a lot of guys who can play shooting guard — Rozier, Bacon, Malik Monk, Nic Batum, Martin — but no one whose size and skill set defines him as the long-term starter at the position.
They might have to draft a guy (ideally 6-5 to 6-7 in height) in the lottery to address this. The good news is the wing positions are usually deeper in a typical draft than any other position. But the Hornets can only be so good in this rebuild until they find a prototypical shooting guard. When that happens, Rozier might play both guard spots off the bench. So long as he gets abundant minutes — and I don’t know why that wouldn’t happen — that could be good for both him and the team.
Center
The tag-team of Biyombo and Cody Zeller works fine, but drafting a young big man (like James Wiseman?) should be a priority. Traditional centers might not be as important in this era of NBA basketball, but the Hornets are 29th among 30 NBA teams in defensive rebound percentage and are 25th in shots blocked per game. That must change.
Salary-cap space
In July, the Hornets will have massive salary-cap space for the first time in several years, after the contracts of Biyombo, Marvin Williams and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist expire. Kupchak told the Observer in September the plan is not to plow into the 2020 free-agent market, but rather to explore trades and invest in extending young players on the roster showing promise.
Former second-round pick Bacon becomes a free agent in July. But the greater question for the long haul will be whether the Hornets can lock in Graham, whether it be next summer (when he still has a season on his rookie contract) or in the summer of 2021.
Important as point guard is, it seems essential the Hornets retain a player they traded into the 2018 second round to acquire and have developed so well in just 1 1/2 seasons.
This story was originally published January 11, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
