There has never been a summer of more upheaval in the NBA than there was this past summer, and no team may have been more devastated by it than the Charlotte Hornets.Six players who made All-NBA honors last year swapped teams in early July (or sooner, unless you’re gullible enough to believe that tampering isn’t really a thing), including Kemba Walker leaving Charlotte for the Boston Celtics on a 4 year, $141 million deal.
Losing an All-Star talent is never fun, but for most of the other departures, there was at least some level of consolation.
Sure, Golden State lost Kevin Durant, but can you really feel THAT bad for the Warriors, who won three of the last five titles (two with Durant)? Celtics fans practically packed Kyrie Irving’s bags for him on his way to Brooklyn.
Kawhi Leonard left Toronto after bringing the franchise its first-ever title. Both the Thunder and Pelicans converted their all-stars into a historic haul of future draft picks and talented young players.
The Charlotte Hornets swapped out Walker for Terry Rozier.
In the season opener on Wednesday night, a new era in Charlotte Hornets basketball began - for better or worse. The combined salaries of the five starters -- Rozier, Dwayne Bacon, Miles Bridges, PJ Washington and Cody Zeller -- will make a combined $44 million this season.
That’s roughly equivalent to the average annual salary Kemba Walker would have commanded had the Hornets offered him the full supermax this past summer.
James Borrego, free of the pressure to win as many games as possible in hopes it would convince Walker to stick around, left longtime veterans with albatross contracts on the bench in favor of a collection of young and unproven players.
What happened next, no one saw coming. The #BabyBugs helped set a franchise record against the Bulls Wednesday night with 23 three-pointers. Washington, who was a polarizing selection at best in June’s draft with the 12th pick, set an NBA record for threes in a rookie debut with seven(!!!).
The offense played at a breakneck pace with 105 possessions (the fastest team in the NBA last season averaged 104.5), caught fire early and never cooled off.
They won by one point.
In the history of the NBA, there have been five other teams who have made 23 or more threes on 44 or fewer attempts. The average margin of victory for those five teams? 24.8 points.
Winning the first game after losing Walker was a much-needed moment of cleansing for a fan base that felt as betrayed by their ownership and front office as any team in the NBA.
It was also fool’s gold. It took one of the most efficient nights in league history from behind the arc to beat a Bulls team that is coming off a 22-win season...by one point.
PJ Washington’s ascendance from late first/early second-round prospect in 2018 to LARRY BIRD 2.0 is a really fun story, and I’ll have plenty to say about that in the coming weeks.
He came back to school, developed a three-point jump shot, and in less than two years is now a viable stretch-four (even stretch-five) in an NBA starting lineup. That is remarkable.
The other major development on Wednesday continued into Friday night. Despite a reality-check 22-point loss to the Timberwolves...Devonte Graham looks...really good!
This is exactly what Borrego was talking about this off-season when he emphasized growth and development as the focus of this season.
Graham was a second-round pick last year and bounced back and forth between Charlotte and the Greensboro Swarm most of his rookie season.
With the Swarm, he averaged 23.3 points per game, shot 38.3 percent from three.
He played sparingly throughout the season, but over the last 13 games (when Borrego finally turned his rotation over to the young guns), Graham was uhhhhh not great.
In the Hornets’ last 13 games last year, he played 18 minutes a night while scoring 5.4 points on 29.7 percent shooting (21.1 percent from three).
He did average nearly four assists with just 0.6 turnovers a night, but there was nothing to indicate that just six months later he would be carrying the Hornets in crunch time of a win.
Yet against the Bulls, Graham scored 23 points on 6-of-7 shooting from behind the arc.
Between that performance and Rozier, who struggled mightily with just seven points on two-of-ten shooting in 30 minutes, there were already small murmurs about Graham closing the gap for the starting point guard spot.
Rozier was much better offensively -- 11 points, 10 assists -- but he picked up three fouls in the first quarter and played just 18 minutes on the night.
“I gotta take the blame for it. I gotta be the one to pull everybody together and weather the storm,” Rozier said afterward.
Rozier was in a visibly sour mood after the game on Friday.
He’s in an impossible position, having to replace the greatest player in franchise history.
Even though Rozier has said all the right things about the weight of replacing Walker, it’s impossible not to notice the difference between those two - on and off the court already. Walker is one of the best leaders in the entire league.
Rozier’s frustration is already bleeding over into his body language after two games.
There’s going to be a lot more rough nights for the Hornets, and it’s incumbent on Rozier to set an example for the young players on how to battle through adversity and focus on the process of getting better.
This is a new role for Rozier as a starter and a leader. The loss of Walker hurt as much off the court as it did on it.
It’s too early to draw definitive conclusions about Rozier’s leadership, but I’ll be keeping a close eye on how he fares in that role moving forward.
As far as Rozier and Graham are concerned. James Borrego told reporters Friday night that he plans on playing the two together more moving forward.
On the surface, it makes sense. Rozier is one of, if not the most proven young(-ish) player on the roster.
The Hornets, like it or not, are invested in him becoming a quality starting point guard. But with the way Graham is playing, he’s earning more than backup minutes for the time being.
So how exactly will the Hornets pull that off?
It’s going to be tough. In the short term, the rotation in the backcourt is already depleted after the loss of Nic Batum for the next 2-4 weeks with a broken finger.
It doesn’t make much sense to start the two together, because the next option at point guard is second-round pick Caleb Martin.
Martin saw his first NBA minutes on Friday night, including just a few possessions as the lead guard...and it did not go well.
Even for a team that’s willing to take its lumps, using Martin more in the rotation as the primary ball-handler seems extremely premature.
Borrego could try to stagger Graham and Rozier’s minutes enough to where one is always on the floor -- think Houston with James Harden and Russell Westbrook -- but that doesn’t account for foul trouble, like what happened with Rozier Friday night.
If either one ends up with a few early fouls, that could mean a heavy workload for the other.
I expect Graham to continue coming off the bench, but Borrego will be more willing to pop him into the lineup early with Rozier, then bring Rozier to the bench and try to stagger them with some overlap as much as he can the rest of the way.
The real question is going to be in crunch time. If both Graham and Rozier are in, who does Borrego take out?
It seems like he’s going to be very reactionary and flexible with his crunch-time lineups depending on who’s playing well on a given night, but the ideal five probably includes Dwayne Bacon, Miles Bridges, Washington and Cody Zeller.
If you include both Graham and Rozier, that means sacrificing valuable length on both ends of the floor by taking one of those four out.
So far this season, Rozier and Graham have played 26 possessions together.
That is a pint-sized sample, but let’s dive into it anyway. The offensive rating is 111.5 points per 100 possessions. That’s very good!
For context, that would have been the eighth-best offense in the league last season. It makes sense.
Between Graham’s ability to shoot and Rozier attacking downhill like a goalline fullback, they both create opportunities to score in different ways.
One slight problem. For a bad defense, it gets even worse when Graham joins Rozier in the backcourt. Like, a LOT worse.
They’re allowing 165 points per 100 possessions. Again, sample size, but it doesn’t take Red Auerbach to know that the lack of length and experience on the perimeter means the Hornets will struggle to contest outside shots, and also protect the defensive glass.
Opponents are rebounding 37 percent of their own misses right now against the Hornets. That is by FAR the highest rate in the league so far.
Borrego spoke about a lack of physicality and mentality that has led to a hoard of second-chance points for opponents, but swapping out a rangy wing for a diminutive guard only exacerbates the problem.
The painful reality for Borrego, and Hornets fans, is that there is no combination of five players on this roster that won’t have at least a few glaring weaknesses.
The youth of this team is extremely evident on the defensive end, where basic rotations and communication is consistently a problem already.
The Timberwolves obliterated the Hornets with cutters on Friday night, particularly when they entered the ball to Karl-Anthony Towns who finished with eight assists in 26 minutes.
The Kemba Walker era is drifting further into the rearview mirror by the day.There’s a new point guard conundrum in Charlotte, and it’s emerged as the first tough decision of the season for Borrego.