Charlotte Hornets: Healthy Michael Kidd-Gilchrist A Key To Season

After several departures this off-season the Charlotte Hornets hope the return of Michael Kidd-Gilchrist will help compensate for their lack of depth.

Michael Kidd-Gilchrist‘s career with the Charlotte Hornets has been snake-bitten up to this point. He’s clearly a talented and valuable player, but injuries have overshadowed his on-court contributions.

Each season of his career has seen him play fewer games than the season before culminating in a 2015-16 season that was almost entirely lost due to injury.

His season essentially ended before it could even begin. Early in the preseason Kidd-Gilchrist took a hard fall against the Orlando Magic, painfully injuring his right shoulder.

After the game it was determined that he had dislocated his shoulder and had also suffered a partially torn labrum. The assumption was that he would miss the remainder of the season given the nine month healing process usually associated with an injury that severe.

Somehow Kidd-Gilchrist sped through his rehab ahead of schedule to return to the court in late January. His return was short-lived, however. After only seven games played MKG would suffer the same injury to his right shoulder after taking a hard fall against the Indiana Pacers.

This time the injury would be season ending.

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Through those seven games he was averaging 12.7 points and 6.4 rebounds per game on 54.1 percent shooting from the floor and 42.9 percent from three-point range. It was an extremely small sample size, but he was on pace to have the best offensive season of his career.

The games played totals for the first four season of Kidd-Gilchrist’s career are as follows: 78, 62, 55 and seven. So much time lost to injury. Yet, he’s still just 22 years old. Injuries don’t have to be the theme of his career.

The Hornets hope this season marks a new and healthy chapter for Kidd-Gilchrist. They weathered the storm without him last season thanks to remarkable contributions from Kemba Walker and Nicolas Batum, as well as their tremendous depth.

Players like Marvin Williams, Jeremy Lin and Courtney Lee (especially Lee given his perimeter defense) stepped up to compensate for his absence. The problem is, the Hornets aren’t so deep anymore. Lin and Lee are gone, so is Al Jefferson.

They can’t afford to lose Kidd-Gilchrist for a significant amount of time this season, they just don’t have the bodies to replace him.

If he’s going to stay healthy, he might have to change the way he plays. His injuries aren’t necessarily occurring because he’s fragile, he just plays at full throttle 100 percent of the time.

Kidd-Gilchrist plays the game with all of the cliches that coaches and analysts love. He hustles. He dives for loose balls. He is a relentless defender. He crashes the boards with reckless abandon. He’s a high-motor player and he makes that apparent whenever he steps onto the court.

He doesn’t have to stop playing hard or doing the things that make him such a valuable player. He just has to be a little more careful. Although, he can be as careful as possible and it still ultimately comes down to luck.

Charlotte needs luck to be on their side this season, because the fact of the matter is when Kidd-Gilchrist is on the floor the Hornets are better. During the 2014-15 season the Hornets had a net rating of plus-12.2 with him on the court.

Their offensive rating was 3.6 points per 100 possessions better while their defensive rating was a whopping 8.6 points per 100 possessions better. He also helped Charlotte’s rebounding significantly.

Their total rebounding percentage increased from 47.9 percent to 53.1 percent with him on the court while their opponent’s total rebounding percentage went from 52.1 percent to 46.9 percent.

That’s the type of impact he makes when healthy.

Last season the results were similar, their net rating with MKG was plus-13.5, but it came in a much smaller sample. Along with all of his defensive contributions his jump shot was noticeably improved in 2015-16.

He probably wasn’t going to shoot 42.9 percent from deep for the rest of the season, but the fact that he was willing to take any three-pointers at all after not taking a single three in 2014-15 is a step in the right direction.

It feels like I write this article at the beginning of every season, but if his body will let him Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is poised to have a breakout season. A season that will make him a household name to people that aren’t Hornets fans, Kentucky fans or basketball nerds.

The defense and intangibles have always been there and last season showed that the offense isn’t far behind.

Charlotte Hornets: A Healthy Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is Key to Their Season

By Andrew Snyder | Sep 13, 2016

After several departures this off-season the Charlotte Hornets hope the return of Michael Kidd-Gilchrist will help compensate for their lack of depth.