This isn’t what Terry Rozier signed up for with the Hornets — and that’s perfectly OK
When the Charlotte Hornets offered Terry Rozier $57 million last season, they knew he could score and had a knack for defense.
They didn’t know how adaptive he was. In his first half-season here, that’s been a trait that has been so helpful.
“If I sit here and complain that, ‘Oh, I should be the point guard!’ Or ‘I should always have the ball in my hand!’ nobody really cares,” Rozier said of his stoicism in the face of change.
“You’ve got a guy who is not making that much, in Devonte (Graham), who has put himself on the radar. You can’t take any of that away from him or this team. I just try to adjust.”
The plan was for Rozier, in his fifth NBA season, to come down from Boston to replace Kemba Walker. Not that he’d do all that three-time All-Star Walker did — Rozier was the first to say that was unrealistic — but to be this team’s primary ball handler.
Less than a month into the season, Graham, a second-year point guard, had played so well that coach James Borrego was compelled to move Graham into the lineup. Rozier shifted over to shooting guard, which was far from a perfect fit for a 6-foot-1 player, but he’s averaging 17.8 points and having career-highs in field-goal percentage (.418) and 3-point percentage (.385).
Rozier made the adjustment a smooth process. In similar situations in the NBA, this sort of thing gets ugly.
“It can go one of two ways,” Borrego said Tuesday following the Hornets’ first practice back from All-Star break. “It can go South quickly, or players can handle it the way Terry has — in a very mature, responsible way.
“It may not be ideally what he thought (when the Hornets acquired him in July), but he’s handled himself with great maturity. He understands his role and he’s thriving in it.”
In-between
At 25, Rozier is nothing like an NBA “old guy.” He and center Cody Zeller are the in-between players, age-wise, between the youth movement the Hornets are enacting and the veterans being phased out.
Walker and Marvin Williams leaving (Williams took a buyout to join the contending Milwaukee Bucks) left a leadership gap. After four seasons with a perennial playoff team in Boston, Rozier figures he can help fill that void, but he has no false sense of replacing Williams.
“No one in here is Marvin Williams,” Rozier said. “Everyone loved Marvin. You can’t just step in and lead the way he leads. Only certain people can do that — to touch people the way he did — but we all need to step up in our own ways.”
Rozier’s way is humor. Borrego says Rozier has a quick wit that keeps this team loose, even as its lost two out of every three games this season.
Losing — and losing the way the Hornets have — is new to Rozier. The Celtics reached the playoffs all four years he was there.
He has already started thinking about late-April, when his season is going to end far earlier than he’s used to.
“It makes for a long summer. I will miss basketball,” Rozier said. “But we won our last two (before the break). We really do take this day-by-day — see what we can do to get better.”
What next?
Improving the Hornets roster might mean more change for Rozier. Ideally, the Hornets need a bigger player at shooting guard, and that figures to be something they’d look for in the draft.
Assuming Graham continues this ascension, that could have Rozier ending up in the second unit for part or all of the remaining two seasons on his contract. It could also mean general manager Mitch Kupchak considers what Rozier would be worth in trade.
No problem. If there’s anything Rozier has proven in six months in Charlotte, it’s that ability to adapt.
“That’s been my life, my situation,” Rozier said. “What I’ve had to go through shapes who I am today.”
