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Charlotte Hornets: Looking Back at Why Lance Stephenson Didn’t Fit In

By Andrew Kennedy

Nov 28, 2014; Charlotte, NC, USA; Charlotte Hornets guard Lance Stephenson (1) complains after being called for a foul during the second half of the game against the Golden State Warriors at Time Warner Cable Arena. Warriors win 106-101. Mandatory Credit: Sam Sharpe-USA TODAY Sports
Nov 28, 2014; Charlotte, NC, USA; Charlotte Hornets guard Lance Stephenson (1) complains after being called for a foul during the second half of the game against the Golden State Warriors at Time Warner Cable Arena. Warriors win 106-101. Mandatory Credit: Sam Sharpe-USA TODAY Sports /
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There’s value in being a skilled basketball player even if you’re not super efficient. NBA teams can find a way to optimize what you bring to the table. But in today’s NBA, if you can’t shoot and you play on the perimeter, you’re in a lot of trouble.

Before the start of the 2014-15 season, one of the most intriguing additions any NBA team made was done by the Charlotte Hornets, signing Lance Stephenson.

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Stephenson was coming off his best season as a pro, a near All-Star with the Indiana Pacers who helped lead the team to an impressive regular season and No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference. It always looked like Stephenson carried with him a lot of star potential, and the Hornets hoped they’d be acquiring just that last year. The roster looked like one poised to make a run at a top 4-5 seed in the East.

Could it have gone any worse for Born Ready in Charlotte? Probably not.

Stephenson may have regressed more than any player in the league last season, hurting his stock so much that Charlotte was sure ready to part ways with him, trading him to the Clippers for the cheaper Spencer Hawes. The main objective: dumping Lance.

The fit was obviously a bad one for Stephenson. Stephenson recently talked to Bleacher Report’s Jared Zwerling about last season, saying, “It just didn’t work. I felt like me and Kemba [Walker] do the same type of stuff, and it just didn’t click. Kemba is like a smaller me. He dominates the ball and he’s a playmaker. And then my jump shot wasn’t falling, so it was a tough season.”

Mar 1, 2015; Orlando, FL, USA; Charlotte Hornets guard Lance Stephenson (1) looks on against the Orlando Magic during the second half at Amway Center. Charlotte Hornets defeated the Orlando Magic 98-83. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 1, 2015; Orlando, FL, USA; Charlotte Hornets guard Lance Stephenson (1) looks on against the Orlando Magic during the second half at Amway Center. Charlotte Hornets defeated the Orlando Magic 98-83. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports /

It’s certainly true that Lance and Kemba are similar in ways. Both have that herky-jerky stepback dribble game that isn’t necessarily conducive to their four teammates on the floor. You have to watch them go to work, hope it works and then maybe be ready to bail them out with a play late in the shot clock if it doesn’t. Two of those guys together and they were stepping on each other’s toes at times. The floor spacing was off. Lance and Kemba aren’t great outside shooters (Lance became putrid) and even Gerald Henderson has more of a midrange game.

But we knew a lot of that before Charlotte acquired him and it’s not like there weren’t players in Indiana who needed the ball either. Stephenson started with Paul George and they made it work for a lot of the season. But in Indiana, Stephenson also played alongside George Hill, who isn’t a ball dominant point like Walker, and Stephenson would get to run the show in the second unit some. Indiana posted up a lot too and Stephenson’s ability to freelance was invited into the offense a bit more.

The Lance-Kemba pairing was clearly the biggest issue in Charlotte. They shared the floor for 749 minutes last season and the Hornets were outscored by 10.1 points per 100 possessions during that time, according to Basketball Reference. The six five-man units Stephenson played the most time with (all included Walker) were all negatives. The Hornets were actually a positive at times when it was Stephenson without Walker.

  • Stephenson-Roberts-Henderson-Williams-Jefferson: +7.3, 36 minutes
  • Stephenson-Roberts-Williams-MKG-Biyombo: +5.9, 33 minutes
  • Stephenson-Henderson-Williams-Zeller-Jefferson: +17.5, 33 minutes

Among the 10 most frequent Hornets five-man lineups that included Stephenson, those are the only ones that were net-positives. And as you can see the best one was with Stephenson running point.

Even if the Kemba-Lance pairing was bad, that doesn’t excuse the enormous dip in Stephenson’s shooting. Overall, he became a 17.1 percent 3-point shooter. Basically the worst in the league of any guy expected to hoist from deep. That brought his overall field goal percentage down to 37.6. NBA defenses are smart, so they were able to take away the rest of his game when it became apparent he wasn’t hitting from deep anymore. That effective handle Lance once had no longer mattered.

This is what Stephenson did on spot-ups, isolations and as the pick-and-roll ball handler, according to NBA.com:

Spot-ups: 0.60 PPP, 7.0 percentile
Isolation: 0.73 PPP, 35.4 percentile
Ball handler: 0.67 PPP, 31.7 percentile

All really below average. The fit wasn’t ideal, but Stephenson knew it wasn’t and it weighed on him more than it should have. Uncomfortable, he couldn’t figure out any other way to help.

Stephenson went on to tell Zwerling that he was hurt by the trade. You know who won’t be hurt? Charlotte. Addition by subtraction at its finest.

If you can only have one of Stephenson or Walker, you go with Walker every time if you’re Charlotte. The two played almost 800 minutes together last season. That’s 800 minutes of basketball that wasn’t working. That’s quite a burden to rid a team of. Free of Stephenson, playoffs may very well be in Charlotte’s future next season.

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