Charlotte Hornets: Complete grades for 2019 NBA offseason
By Phil Watson
The Charlotte Hornets were hoping to retain all-time leading scorer Kemba Walker and find a taker for Nicolas Batum’s contract … and went 0-for-2.
In this crazy NBA offseason of wild swings in the balance of power across the league and teams posting massive wins or taking massive losses, the Charlotte Hornets would be hard-pressed to find a worst-case scenario more dire than what has actually happened.
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Kemba Walker, the team’s all-time leading scorer and just the second Charlotte player named to an All-NBA team since the city rejoined the league in 2004, re-signed with the Hornets … on his way out the door to the Boston Celtics in a two-way sign-and-trade.
Meanwhile, the team has still not found a taker for the onerous contract of fading Nicolas Batum, who is owed $25.57 million this season, with a $27.1 million team option for 2020-21 that has about the same chance of being picked up as a 1986 Yugo at a used-car lot.
But at least the team lost $45 million in cap space when Bismack Biyombo ($17 million), Marvin Williams ($15 million) and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist ($13 million) all exercised their lucrative player options for 2019-20.
Because when you can pay three guys $45 million coming off a season during which they combined for 21.2 points and 13.8 rebounds per game, you can’t say no, right? Well, in this case because of the contract language, the Hornets could not — in fact — say no.
What’s left after the dust settled is not promising. Veteran Tony Parker opted to retire rather than return for a second season in the Queen City, with Jeremy Lamb — the team’s second-best player last season — and stretch big Frank Kaminsky departing in free agency.
The Hornets hung around in the Eastern Conference playoff race last season until the final night, finishing 39-43 and two games behind the eighth-place Detroit Pistons in the East.
That sort of almost break-even season may feel like a dynasty by the time 2019-20 is finished, because Charlotte’s prospects — at this point — are bleak.
Hard-capped because of the sign-and-trade acquisition of Terry Rozier from the Celtics in the deal that sent Walker away, Charlotte currently has a little less than $11.4 million remaining under the luxury tax apron, per Jeff Siegel of Early Bird Rights.
There are contracts that presumably could be moved — Batum, primarily, but also the expiring deals of Biyombo, Williams and Kidd-Gilchrist — but with most of the cap space around the NBA already accounted for, the Hornets don’t have a lot of room to maneuver.
General manager Mitch Kupchak oversaw the demolition of the NBA’s most consistently strong franchise, the Los Angeles Lakers, and his opening act in Charlotte has not gone terribly well so far.
The Hornets do have the smallest bit of wiggle room under the hard cap, as they could release the cap hold on unrestricted free agent Shelvin Mack ($1.62 million) if he doesn’t find a new address and Dwayne Bacon‘s $1.62 million salary is non-guaranteed.
But that’s about it in terms of the bright side as far as the Hornets’ cap space is concerned.
Here are the grades for each of the Hornets’ moves thus far this offseason.