Charlotte Hornets: Kemba Walker Having The Best Season Of His Career

The Charlotte Hornets’ starting point guard, Kemba Walker, is off to a great to in the 2015-2016 season thanks to his new-found efficiency.

The Charlotte Hornets are off to an 11-8 start that few saw coming this offseason. They’re winning in large part thanks to a revamped roster and a new look offense. Their current record has them as the sixth seed in the shockingly loaded Eastern Conference, and fans already have visions of playoff games dancing in their heads.

On an individual level, there are plenty of people to thank for this outstanding start. Many have correctly pointed to head coach Steve Clifford as the reason for this current run.

Clifford has turned this squad into a ball moving, three-point shooting offensive beast (10^th best in the NBA, scoring 105.6 points per 100 possessions) while still maintaining a good defense (10^th best in the NBA, allowing only 102.8 points per 100 possessions). He’s done all that without the services of defensive anchor Michael Kidd-Gilchrist.

Then there’s Nicolas Batum. The former Portland Trail Blazer has brought scoring and playmaking with him to Charlotte, giving the organization the Swiss-Army Knife type player they’ve never had before. He’s a do-it-all wing that is currently averaging 17.2 points, 6.6 points and 4.5 assists per game while shooting 40.4 percent from three-point range.

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You could also point to Jeremy Lin, Jeremy Lamb, Cody Zeller, and Spencer Hawes for stabilizing the bench unit. However, there’s one player quietly having an excellent season that deserves recognition. Starting point guard Kemba Walker is currently having the best season of his entire career, and it’s not particularly close.

Walker is averaging 18.4 points and 5.1 assists per 36 minutes on 44.2 percent shooting and 36.7 percent from outside. If the season ended today it would be a career high in points per game, field goal percentage, and three-point percentage. He also currently holds a career high true shooting percentage of 54.1 percent.

Walker leads the team in scoring and is doing it efficiently for the first time in his NBA career. His shot selection has improved slightly from previous seasons, showing his maturation as a basketball player. Of his three-pointers, 16.4 percent are of the catch-and-shoot variety now, up from 14.9 percent last season, and he’s knocking down 40 percent of them.

In the past, Walker has had a tendency to shoot off the dribble from outside, a habit that’s seen him shoot only 32.1 percent from distance over his first four seasons.

Pull-up jumpers still constitute 48.9 percent of his shots, but if he continues mixing in catch and shoot three-point attempts and trips to the free throw line into his repertoire, the Hornets can live with that.

Pull-up two-point jumpers are not popular shots in the new analytically inclined NBA, but at least Walker has improved in that area as well. He’s currently shooting 36.6 percent on pull-up jumpers after shooting 34.3 percent on those types of shots last season.

If this ratio continues to shift in favor of poor catch-and shoot-jumpers and shots at the rim, Walker’s sparkling season could continue or even get better. If not, then he may be in for a regression. With a player that takes a high percentage of jump shots you have to wonder if this 19-game sample is just a random hot streak. That’s the worry moving forward, but for now it looks like Walker has changed his shooting for the better.

Walker looked like he was coming down to earth after a 2-for-16 performance against the Golden State Warriors, but he bounced back nicely Saturday night, leading the Hornets to 102-96 win over the Chicago Bulls. Walker gritted his way to 17-point, six-rebound, five-assist night on 7-of-16 shooting. He also knocked down a clutch step-back jumper that cemented the win for Charlotte. Some things never change.

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Walker has been a recognizable player early in his NBA career thanks to his high profile success in college at UCONN, but he hasn’t necessarily been a good NBA player. His career field goal percentage is a disappointing 39.8 percent and he has shot only 32.1 percent from three-point range.

Walker is a player where the eye test has never matched what the numbers say. Aesthetically he looks the part of an NBA point guard. He’s a talented ball-handler and his step-back jump shot is gorgeous, but the numbers have shown a flawed player that can’t shoot for his entire career.

However, there’s a case to be made that Walker’s poor efficiency is not entirely his fault. During his first four seasons, he never played on an above average offensive team. Not even a mediocre offensive team. During those four seasons, Walker played on teams with offensive ratings that ranked 30^th (95.2), 28^th (101.5), 24^th (103.6), and 28^th (100.1).

How is he supposed to have individual success when it’s a struggle for the entire team to score points? He had to carry the offense by any means necessary. That meant often taking bad or contested shots because it was still the best option for those particular teams.

Now he finally has legitimate playmakers and scorers around him. This allows him to take fewer shots and it also means he’s getting the ball in better positions to score.

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He’s taking 14.4 shots per game this season, the lowest since his rookie year. His usage rate of 23.9 percent is the lowest of his career. Kemba doesn’t have to be the hero anymore. He still leads the team in scoring with 17.6 points per game, but the team has five players averaging double figures in scoring and Marvin Williams is close to making it six (9.9 points per game).

This current era of NBA basketball places a high importance on outside shooting, and having a point guard that is such a poor outside shooter had been a sore spot for the Charlotte Hornets offense. The Hornets hope those days are over.

Given the trajectory of his early career the expectation should be for Walker to fall back to earth. He’s never been an efficient shooter and it may seem unreasonable to expect him to continue shooting this far above his career averages.

It will be important for Steve Clifford to keep an eye on the type of shots he’s taking and keep him focused on taking the right type of shots within the flow of the offense. This team is more balanced than it’s ever been and has a number of different players that can score, there’s no need for Walker to play hero ball anymore.

Next: 5 Reasons Behind Charlotte's Promising Start

If Walker can remain efficient, maintain good shot selection and play within himself, then he could continue having a stellar season and the Charlotte Hornets may be playoff bound.