Charlotte Hornets: Complete grades for 2019 NBA offseason

Overall

The Charlotte Hornets have to have a plan. Apparently, that plan includes going into ping-pong ball hunting overload for 2019-20.

General manager Mitch Kupchak brought an impressive resume with him to Charlotte that included four championships during his 16½-year tenure as GM of the Los Angeles Lakers from 2000-17.

But Kupchak also engineered the demise of the Lakers, going all in on Steve Nash and Dwight Howard in the summer of 2012 with disastrous results and doubling down by giving an aging and battered Kobe Bryant $50 million for two final, terrible, seasons.

Since coming to Charlotte in April 2018, Kupchak has more resembled Gozer the Destructor than anyone interested in building anything, swapping the bad contract of Dwight Howard for the even-worse one of Timofey Mozgov (a monster of his own creation in L.A.), then flipping that for the slightly less terrible contract of Bismack Biyombo.

In his second season, he started it off by not being able to keep the franchise’s all-time leading scorer, then engineering a sign-and-trade that would allow the Hornets the privilege of paying roughly $19 million a year for three years to a guy who — outside of the 2017-18 season — has played right at replacement level in his career.

So, yes, if there is a plan in Charlotte, Kupchak isn’t making it entirely clear … unless that plan is to tear everything down past the foundation and start over.

In that case, he’s off to a fantastic start.

Grade: F