Charlotte Hornets Season Preview

Charlotte Hornets

2014 Record 33-49

2015 O/U 32.5

Who are their stars?

The inside-outside of Kemba Walker and Al Jefferson is what makes this team win. Both of them are phenomenal scorers at their respected positions and both can create with and without each other. It is a huge strength to have the point guard and center positions filled. The question, however is how high are either players ceiling? Jefferson is now 30 and had only played in 61 games last year. Walker is still entering his prime, but is coming off a knee injury and that is always something to monitor. When both are healthy and playing, scoring is no problem, but both of their weak points are on the defensive side. Jefferson is the biggest culprit. Sometimes it just seems he doesn’t care on defense, and he almost always needs to be spelled with a rim defender. Walker isn’t bad, but in such a point guard heavy league, he isn’t considered a stronger defender either.

Who are the glue guys?

The injury to Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is devastating for the Hornets. MKG was slotted to get a lot of minutes in the wing, and in the small ball four with Nic Batum, and a rotation of others. On paper it wasn’t a bad idea, but without MKG this team is now arguably the worst defensive team in the league. Batum is the clear glue guy who has to carry the wing position, and now it comes to down who else can play with him, Kemba, and big Al Jefferson.

Who are the rotation players?

Cody Zeller is this teams best rotational player. A former top ten pick he has potential to be a starting center, but behind Jefferson he just slides in as a top bench center and young one at that. He could see time at power forward, but the problem with Charlotte to me is that they are struggling with roster construction. At the guard position, they have scorers in Jeremy Lin, Jeremy Lamb, and PJ Hariston to sub in and combined with Batum there are now no defensive lineups in Charlotte this year. Marvin Williams can fill in for the small ball four that MKG was going to be, but power forward was something they are invested in anyway, and it was going to be interesting to see how many minutes he would have had in that role. Frank Kaminsky who projects to be a stretch four, was drafted in the top ten this year, so you have to assume, at age 22 that they wanted Kaminsky to play this season. Between him, and Williams you would expect a lot of minutes but then they went and added Tyler Hansborough and Spencer Hawes to really make you scratch your head. Between Zeller and Jefferson minutes at the center position should be spare, so to have so little in the guard position, and to invest so much in the frontcourt is at least something to watch for.

Where do they rank? Over Under? How far can they go?

You can look at the frontcourt depth and love it, I look at all the names and I am confused. To me, this is a team that has no direction on where to go. They seem ready to move on from Jefferson, or at least their roster construction is saying that. To trade him is to move to the future, to move to small ball, and to maybe find an identity. To hold on is to be the 10th best team in the East, miss the playoffs by a few games, and draft another great college player turned NBA project to join the rest of them. To me this team cannot make the playoffs, will lose around 50 games, and ranks toward the bottom of the league.

Under 32.5 wins, 14th in the Eastern Conference, 28th in the NBA