Charlotte Hornets: Best Move They Did And Didn’t Make
The Charlotte Hornets entered free agency with half of their rotation hitting the market. What was the best move they made to stay relevant? What was the move they missed out on?
NBA teams are often victims of their own success or, unfairly, beneficiaries of their own failure. Teams that consistently lose are rewarded with high draft picks, chances to grab a superstar and turn around their fortunes.
Teams that find the right combination of veterans and young talent to make a leap in the standings can be forced to break up their roster, unable to pay market value for their increased production.
The Charlotte Hornets fell into the latter category this offseason, facing five prominent free agents months after the best Charlotte team in decades took Miami to seven games in the playoffs.
Al Jefferson, Nicolas Batum, Courtney Lee, Jeremy Lin and Marvin Williams all hit the open market in July. With a finite amount of cap space, the Hornets’ task was keeping some — it was never going to be all.
Related Story: 25 Best Players to Play for the Charlotte Hornets
In the end Charlotte re-signed two of the five, making moves in other areas to replace those who left. What was the best move they made to secure their core? And what was the best move they should have made?
Best Move They Made: Re-signing Nicolas Batum to Less Than the Max
Last offseason the Hornets traded from a position of depth (Noah Vonleh, a power forward) to acquire a player at a position of need. Nicolas Batum started on the wing for Charlotte all season, providing both the offense and defense something it lacked from its other players.
On offense, Batum’s ball-handling and playmaking freed up Kemba Walker to have a career scoring year. While Walker can pass, he doesn’t have the instincts for distributing that many point guards around the league do — and that Batum does as well.
Batum averaged a team-high 5.8 assists this season, 4th in the league among non-point guards.
More from Hoops Habit
- 7 Players the Miami Heat might replace Herro with by the trade deadline
- Meet Cooper Flagg: The best American prospect since LeBron James
- Are the Miami Heat laying the groundwork for their next super team?
- Sophomore Jump: 5 second-year NBA players bound to breakout
- NBA Trades: The Lakers bolster their frontcourt in this deal with the Pacers
Opposing teams that stuck their best defender on Walker would be hard-pressed to match up with the score-pass option Batum presented. If defenders closed hard on him, he could put the ball on the deck and blow past them.
Given space, he could shoot from outside or make the pass to the open man. Send a double team, and he would thread a pass to the now-open player. While not elite in any of these categories, Batum was competent or better in all of them.
When Walker or backup point guard Jeremy Lin had the ball, Batum was a dangerous spot-up option on the wing. His 34.8 percent mark from long range, while not elite, opened up space in the lane for the point guards to work.
When compared to the wing options the Hornets trotted out last season — Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Lance Stephenson, Gary Neal, and P.J. Hairston all shot 30 percent or worse — Batum’s shooting unlocked a level of offensive production this team couldn’t reach before.
When the other team had the ball, Charlotte had a wing defender to place on the opposing team’s best wing. That role was usually filled by Kidd-Gilchrist, but two separate injuries limited the swingman to seven games last year.
Before last year, the Hornets struggled to find a second defender alongside Kidd-Gilchrist; Batum stepped up in a major way to keep the defense from springing any leaks.
Next season, the pairing of Batum and Kidd-Gilchrist on the wing should terrorize opposing Eastern Conference coaches. Walker took a major step forward last season on defense as well, and the Hornets have all the makings of a top-level defensive team.
In past seasons when that was true their offense stagnated; this season Charlotte can expect to field a strong unit on both ends, in large part due to Batum’s presence.
Locking up Batum to a new contract was Charlotte’s top priority this offseason.
While the leap in cap space made Batum’s max contract amount $152 million, he agreed to sign for five years and $120 million, taking $32 million less than he could have gotten to provide the Hornets with more cap room to sign other players.
Where a max deal would have been a stretch to pay a 28-year-old forward who has never made an All-Star team, his actual number is much more palatable and ensures the Hornets will have two top pieces for years to come in Walker and Batum.
Best Move They Didn’t Make: Keeping Their Draft Pick
After a 48-34 campaign this last season, Charlotte found itself picking in an unusual position — the back third of the draft.
Armed with the 22nd pick in the draft, the Hornets wouldn’t get a crack at the very best of the incoming prospects, but they still had the ability to add a young player who could develop into a rotation piece.
Instead the Hornets traded the pick. On the surface that isn’t a terrible move — Charlotte is a veteran team hoping to build on last season’s success — but three factors make it the worst move of the Hornets’ offseason.
They traded with the Sacramento Kings for an overpaid Marco Belinelli and in doing so, hurt themselves in multiple ways.
First, they acquired a sub-par player. Last offseason, Belinelli parlayed a short stint of success playing in the league’s best system into a $19 million contract from the Sacramento Kings. Exposed to the elements outside of San Antonio, Belinelli wilted.
After shooting 39 percent from long-range over two seasons with the Spurs, the Italian shooting guard hit only 30 percent of his three-pointers last year.
More from Charlotte Hornets
- Brandon Miller, not Victor Wembanyama, is the rookie to watch in 2023
- 5 players who will challenge Victor Wembanyama for Rookie of the Year
- Ranking the 10 championship-less NBA teams by closeness to title
- 4 Reasons drafting Scoot Henderson should be a no-brainer for Hornets
- Ranking the 5 best available power forwards in 2023 NBA free agency
A shooter without a shot, Belinelli was a black hole for the Kings while on the court. As a team they were 4.2 points worse than their opponents when he was on the court. In other words, he hurt his team just as much as Al Horford or Tim Duncan helped theirs.
The Hornets are hoping that he regains his San Antonio shooting touch — but even while on the Spurs, Belinelli was a negative presence while on the court. Outside of a few shooting streaks, he has not proven to be a quality NBA player.
Secondly, in trading for Belinelli and his $6.3 million cap hit this season, the Hornets tightened the amount of available cap space they had to re-sign their free agents. They lost Courtney Lee and Jeremy Lin in free agency, replacing them with Belinelli and Ramon Sessions.
If they kept the pick and didn’t sign Sessions, that would have been more than $11 million they could have applied to keeping Lee or Lin. Both signed for less than $12 million with other teams and both would have been superior players to Belinelli or Sessions.
Finally, by adding a 30-year-old shooting guard, Charlotte cost itself the opportunity of adding young talent to its pipeline. With P.J. Hairston and Noah Vonleh traded away, the only rotation pieces on rookie contracts are Frank Kaminsky and Cody Zeller.
The need for young players in the backcourt is something almost every team in the league struggles with and the Hornets punted on the chance of addressing it in order to add Belinelli.
ALSO SEE: Washington Wizards: Best Move They Did, Didn't Make
Marco Belinelli may regain his shooting touch and become a valuable spacing weapon for the Hornets. But even a career year from the Italian guard will not make up for the opportunity cost of losing Jeremy Lin and Courtney Lee.
And in a year or two Belinelli will be gone or ineffective and the Hornets will have no one waiting to take his place. This was a win-now move that could have hindered their future and kept them from winning in the present.