2017 NBA Offseason Review: Charlotte Hornets
With exciting draft picks and an All-Star center, the Hornets look to get off the treadmill of NBA mediocrity

The Charlotte Hornets are stuck in the middle. There is no way around that fact, and in the modern NBA that is not a place you want to be. The Hornets had a chance in 2012 to draft a can’t-miss franchise player with the number one pick in the draft. They were coming off a season where they set the new benchmark for futility. After posting a 7–59 season (it was the strike-shortened season), the outlook for the franchise actually seemed to be on the upswing. They had a young and exciting point guard in Kemba Walker and more importantly, they had 250 chances out of 1000 to land Kentucky’s phenom forward Anthony Davis. They didn’t. And the franchise has yet to recover.
Driven by their ultra-competitive chairman Michael Jordan, the Charlotte Hornets haven’t bottomed out since that 2012 season, and it has landed them in lottery hell. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Cody Zeller, Noah Vonleh, and Frank Kaminsky are the players that the Hornets have selected with the second, fourth, ninth, and tenth picks since that ill-fated 2012 draft. It almost sums up the Hornets perfectly: solidly mediocre. None of those names are bad choices, but none of them are selling jerseys and putting butts in the upper deck of the arena.
Like it or not, there is a reward for losing. Teams like the Lakers and the Sixers have landed several high quality players including potential franchise players like Joel Embiid and Lonzo Ball by losing a lot. But the 2012 season left a bad taste in their mouth. Charlotte is an organization that wants desperately to compete. So every season they add a patchwork veteran like Al Jefferson, Nic Batum, and Dwight Howard, who keeps the ship a little too afloat to bottom out.

Make no mistake, I am sympathetic to the plight that Charlotte faces. The Hornets are a small market team who has no star in the era when stars are flocking to play together. They are a pro basketball team right in the heart of college basketball country. Bottoming out is hard to stomach, and it is hard to pitch to season ticket holders, a commodity that small market teams must cling to. There is certainly no guarantee that high lottery picks will yield a star. Ultimately, NBA teams are businesses, and dedicating a season to losing is a hefty price tag to put on an investment that might yield another Michael Kidd-Gilchrist or Cody Zeller.
So the Hornets are once again attempting to stave off the slide to the bottom. And maybe it is for the best. Maybe they can create some excitement around Kemba Walker, Malik Monk, and Dwight Howard. Fielding an exciting but mediocre team can work in your favor, just ask the Denver Nuggets who leveraged a competitive 40–42 record into Paul Millsap.
If the Hornets can capture that kind of lightning in a bottle, then they might be able to compete in an increasingly weak Eastern Conference. The Hornets managed to retain a large portion of their core from last season. Consistency will no doubt be a strength for the Hornets as the look to improve from last year’s 36–46 record.
Key Losses
Marco Belinelli
Marco Belinelli was traded to Atlanta in the deal that brought Dwight Howard to the Hornets. His departure will leave a hole at the backup guard position. Last season Belinelli averaged 10.5 points per game and 2.0 assists and shared a large portion of the backup ball handling duties with Ramon Sessions. Belinelli was also a quality shooter in off-ball situations, shooting 36% from three. Replacing Belinelli’s shooting might be the most difficult prospect for Charlotte, who added Michael-Carter Williams and rookie Dwayne Bacon to replace Belinelli and Sessions on the depth chart.
Miles Plumlee
The other piece of the Howard trade that the Hornets sent out was backup center Miles Plumlee. Plumlee was acquired from Milwaukee in a midseason trade that sent Roy Hibbert and Spencer Hawes to the Bucks. Averaging only 13.4 minutes and appearing in only 13 games with the Hornets, Plumlee never managed to break into the Hornets backcourt rotation. The Hornets will be in the market for another backup big who can play behind Dwight Howard, Frank Kaminsky, and Cody Zeller, but that addition could wait until around the start of training camp.
Key Additions
Malik Monk
This is one of the picks that I enjoyed most in the draft. In what looks to be a loaded class, the Charlotte Hornets managed to turn the #11 pick in the draft into a player that has the talent to be a number one scoring option. There are very few drafts where you can get that much talent that late, but the 2017 group has a a lot of talent outside of the usual top picks.

Monk is exactly what the Hornets needed, a heat-check scorer who will sell jerseys and bring some excitement. Hornets fans have already seen what Monk is capable of when he hung 47 points on the beloved UNC Tar Heels in December of last year. He is an electric shooter who is capable of creating his own looks off the dribble. While his ball handling and court vision will need to improve if he wants to become a full-time point guard, Monk has compelling possibilities as a combo guard already.
There is an interesting question about Monk’s fit alongside Kemba Walker. Both Walker and Monk lack the size to defend NBA 2s and this will limit the number of times that head coach Steve Clifford can run lineups with both of his best scorers on the court at the same time. But Monk’s integration into Charlotte’s system could be indicative of the Hornet’s mindset moving forward. Walker only has two years left on his contract and if the Hornets are looking to move on from him it makes sense to draft a successor and try to move his contract before looming free agency takes away any leverage they have.
Dwight Howard
Adding Dwight Howard to a team used to propel a team straight into title contention. When the LA Lakers added Howard in the summer of 2012, there was practically a parade. The days of Orlando Dwight Howard are over, as the man who once single-handedly carried the Magic to the 2009 Finals is a shadow of what he once was was a decade ago. But even adding 2017 Dwight Howard is a huge improvement to the Hornets frontcourt.

Howard averaged 13.5 points and 12.7 rebounds on 63.5% shooting last season for the Hawks while also posting an impressive defensive rating of 100. Those numbers are better than both Frank Kaminsky and Cody Zeller across the board. And the price was absolutely right. The Hornets acquired a former all-star at the cost of Marco Belinelli, Mason Plumlee and the 41st pick in the draft.
While the deal was a bargain for a team in search of talent, there are some worrying details that the Hornets will need to work out. The fit can be somewhat awkward with Howard clogging a lot of space in the lane for drivers like Monk and Walker, and not pairing well with Zeller, who has trouble spacing the floor with other bigs. Howard is an old-school center in a league that has largely moved toward flexibility and shooting at the 5 spot. His impact can be somewhat limited in up tempo situations, and the lack of three-point shooting will create crunch time issues with Michael Kidd-Gilchrist.
Who Are The Hornets?
By adding Dwight Howard and drafting Malik Monk, the Hornets have likely worked their way into a six seed in the East. Indiana, Atlanta, and Chicago have taken big steps backward and are likely to be out of the playoff hunt this season, so the door is open for the Hornets to grab one of their spots.
Integrating Monk into the offense alongside Walker will present problems at times, and the two will have to find a balance to co-exists. There will also have to be some decisions made about the odd frontcourt of Howard, Zeller, and Kaminsky. But if those can rough edges can be smoothed out, the Hornets will likely be able to post a win total in the mid-40s.
But the biggest questions will remain. Where and when will the Hornets get a superstar? Will they attempt a full rebuild? And when will Michael Jordan’s patience with mediocrity run out? The team is too good land a high lottery selection, but not good enough to really compete even in the East. Every year that the Hornets stretch out this run at the middle, it gets harder to get a star and closer to the luxury tax, the most unenviable position for a franchise to be in. Maybe it is time for things to fall apart, because the center cannot hold for Michael Jordan and the Hornets.
Statistics courtesy of Basketball Reference
