2017–18 NBA Preview: Charlotte Hornets
Hey Hornets fans, I guess I don’t know how to break this gently, it’s a Dwight Howard world and the rest of us are just living in it (according to everything we’ve ever known, seen, and heard from or about Howard). The man who sees himself as both the best player on every team he’s ever been a part of and the only player in the league with the ability to create artistic physical comedy. The Charlotte Hornets are about to enter D12 World.
The season hasn’t started yet, but Charlotte already has another injury messing with their season. It’s been a theme for a while now. I had the opportunity to cover the Hornets for SB Nation’s At The Hive for about a season and a half. The fans are great, knowledgeable people and they’re getting used to having potential derailed by injuries.
Nicolas Batum going down was a full-on groin punch to the 2017–18 season before it even started. Last season it was a whole bunch of players, but Michael Kidd-Gilchrist’s history is particularly frustrating. Losing Cody Zeller last year, turning to look at the bench and finding Spencer Hawes returning your gaze is chilling for so many reasons.
The Zeller problem has been partially addressed with the addition of Howard, who will likely start at the beginning of the season. There aren’t a lot of options other than starting for a player with the fragile, ginormous ego of a player like Howard, but it’ll be a test right away and I don’t see head coach Steve Clifford going long with Howard as his starter with Kemba Walker if the sensitive big man doesn’t get the pick and roll going. Zeller, even as a more limited player, has worked the pick and roll with Walker in many big game situations. They click together.
Pick and roll will be everything. Walker led the NBA is pick and roll possessions per game. He averaged 12.2 such possessions as the ball handler last season. Overall, he was in the 86th percentile, with a scoring frequency of 42.7 percent. In such situations, he averaged 0.98 points per possession, better than players like Russell Westbrook, John Wall, DeMar DeRozan. He’s just a little behind players like James Harden, Damian Lillard and Isaiah Thomas. Overall, he’s ahead of a lot of great NBA guards and that has a lot to do with guys like Zeller who roll off of those plays. Probably the highlight of my time covering the Hornets was when I started to figure out exactly when they were going to run the Kemba-Cody P-n-R ahead of the team running it. Clifford has a flow and so do two of his best players.
This could end up being a Dwight problem, though Charlotte and their fans deserve better. Zeller, Hawes and Frank Kaminsky all ranked in the top 50 in the league for pick-and-roll possessions per game where they are the roll man. Zeller averaged 3.1, Hawes was at 1.8, and Kaminsky 2.7. Howard is further down the line at 1.3. Unsurprisingly, despite some combination of his reluctance and/or play calling that doesn’t put him in those types of possessions, he’s good when he does it and ranks in higher than the 80th percentile among all roll men in the league last season. His 1.18 points per possession as the roll man are better than a significant portion of the players on the list ahead of him in frequency and Walker will really need him to engage and commit on those play calls this year.
It’s a bigger issue than usual because for all that Howard adds, he will be disrupting several years of chemistry being built between Walker and the other player who have picked up starting duties at center in Zeller and when forced into action, Kaminsky. More importantly, with Batum sidelined for 8–12 weeks to start the year, they are losing their starting shooting guard. Of course, they traded streaky gunner Marco Belinelli to the Atlanta Hawks to get Howard, so their competent fill-in option is gone because of Howard and makes their reliance on his adaptation of the system even more important.
Even if the Batum injury is bad and probably ends up putting the Hornets in a hole to start the season, it’s something to look forward to on the player development front. Jeremy Lamb is consistently a head-scratcher, a big contributor in moments and sentenced to a life sitting on the bench in the next moment.
I don’t have faith in Lamb, because history and because Clifford has similarly not put a lot of trust in him since he joined Charlotte. Also, I can’t help but be significantly more hyped on the development that is Malik Monk’s preseason.
I have no idea what Monk can be as a pro, but his drop to the Hornets in the draft was one of the few things that could have made Donovan Mitchell seem like a second option at the №11 spot. Obviously, he has tremendous upside and was projected to go several spots higher in the draft. For a small market squad like Charlotte, getting a player like Monk without having to dive deep or give up on competing for playoff position is pretty close to a best-case scenario.
In addition to cheering for Malik Monk to be a success with the with the Hornets, I want Frank Kaminsky to be good at basketball in the NBA. He was much better in so many ways from his rookie season to his second year in the league. The one particularly frustrating area is his 3-point shooting. If he can get his percentage up over 38 or 39 from deep, it’s going to change everything for him and for the entire Charlotte second unit. Hell, if he can get up to 38 or 39 percent consistently, he could overtake Marvin Williams in the starting lineup. Williams had a great 2015–16 and earned himself a new deal, then promptly dropped his 3-point shooting by five percent in 2016–17. That changed took him from one of the better floor-spacing forwards to minor threat. At age 31, the likelihood that Williams returns to his 2015 form feels like you might as well be screaming at a wall.
The pile of parts is high right now, with Michael Carter-Williams brought in to hold down the backup minutes behind Walker at point. Last year it was a very disappointing Ramon Sessions and the year before it was a competent Jeremy Lin. Lin was a perfect fit as the leader on the second unit and it still hurts the Hornets that they couldn’t retain his services, but money and starting minutes for the Brooklyn Nets were too much to resist.
The rest of the roster looks like a lot of rookies or players who haven’t made an impact in the pros yet.
The current era of basketball in Charlotte has been great. The team has gone from the days of the Bobcats and nine wins to making the playoffs and a roster that features one of the best point guards in the Eastern Conference. They’ve got Michael Jordan as an owner, Rich Cho in the front office, and Clifford on the bench. For a small market, they’ve certainly done well to put themselves in the competitive tier of basketball that is also fun to watch. It feels like changes are coming. Forget injuries, that won’t be enough to keep stasis if this team doesn’t get back into the playoffs. Even that might not be enough.
The bench strength has been a thorn for this team for years and it doesn’t look much better this season. If they don’t rise to the top in a spectacularly weak East this year, and with draft reform incoming, the future looks challenging. The Hornets won 36 games last year, thanks to poor bench play and injuries. This year, their over-under line is 42.5. I think they go over. But that all depends on the two “H” outcomes — Howard and health. I’ll take the over, let’s go Buzz City!
There is an alternate timeline where my entire season preview was just lyrics from D12’s album, D12 World. Be glad I gave you this version instead.
