Marco Belinelli has been off to a stellar shooting start this season for the Charlotte Hornets. But have his individual numbers outweighed his overall impact on the team?
It’s hard to say that the Charlotte Hornets have come back down to Earth primarily on their own doing.
After starting out the season 6-1, the Hornets have won three of their last nine games. During that span, they have lost four games decided by five points or less, including two overtime bouts with the New Orleans Pelicans and, most recently, the New York Knicks.
At the same time, the Hornets have faced the likes of the San Antonio Spurs, Toronto Raptors and the defending champion Cleveland Cavaliers, all clear cut success stories to start the year.
Along with that, they’ve been without various rotation players like Cody Zeller, Jeremy Lamb and now Marvin Williams for what was clearly a tough stretch of games.
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Obviously that has forced Hornets head coach Steve Clifford to rely on more reserve-type players to step up and deliver in a higher amount of minutes.
Of those players, the Hornets have gotten a sizeable contribution from arguably their most surprising acquisition from the offseason in Marco Belinelli.
Coming off a fairly disastrous year, his lone season as part of the Sacramento Kings, Belinelli’s move to Charlotte certainly brought on plenty of criticism on the day of the 2016 NBA Draft.
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However, considering Hornets free agent-to-be Courtney Lee would wind up signing elsewhere shortly after the start of free agency, acquiring Belinelli gave the team a worthwhile, albeit uninspiring option to pair next to the promising, but inconsistent Jeremy Lamb.
But Belinelli’s start this year has been anything but uninspiring and in fact, he’s playing some of the best basketball of his 10-year career.
The 30-year old Italian’s shooting numbers have resurged in impressive fashion, the biggest being his three-point percentage (48.4 percent), which ranks fourth in the NBA.
Considering almost half of Belinelli’s shots have come from behind the three-point line this year (Belinelli’s three-point attempt rate is 48.5 percent, per Basketball-Reference.com), his dramatically improved efficiency from deep has been helpful for a Hornets team that’s looking for reliable outside shooters next to Kemba Walker.
With Belinelli now bouncing back with career year-type numbers, the biggest question is how has his output fit within scale of the entire team?
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So far, the answer hasn’t been too positive as the Hornets are 6.5 points per 100 possessions better without Belinelli in 365 minutes (per NBA.com/stats), the second-worst ranking on the team behind Williams.
Compare that to his minus-0.3 points per 100 possessions on court net rating, it appears Belinelli’s success so far has mostly been limited to himself 16 games into the Hornets season.
That’s not particularly surprising considering this has been on par for most of Belinelli’s career up until this point. Not only that, but the injury troubles the Hornets have and continue to face certainly play a factor in Belinelli’s impact on the team.
With that said, it’ll be interesting to see if Belinelli’s team-wide impact changes for the better, that is when (or if) the Hornets can regain a level of positive consistency once everyone is healthy.
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There’s no question he clearly fills a need for the Hornets and given Lamb’s past struggles, Belinelli’s individual effectiveness early this year is a good option to have for them. Now it’s time to see that become a net positive for Belinelli and the Hornets.