Should The Charlotte Hornets Tank This Season?
By John Bauman
The Charlotte Hornets have a 10-20 record so far this season. Should they give up this year and tank for a high lottery pick?
At the beginning of the 2014-15 season, the Charlotte Hornets were a trendy sleeper pick for the three seed in the Eastern Conference, behind Cleveland and Chicago, and looked to be headed in the right direction after signing Lance Stephenson and adding him to an already impressive core of Kemba Walker and Al Jefferson
But through the first 30 games of the NBA season, the Hornets sit at 10-20 and in the 12th spot in the Eastern Conference, behind lowly Boston, Orlando and Indiana in the race for the 8th seed. The team’s prized signing in free agency over the summer, Lance Stephenson, has not played well at all. Stephenson is shooting 38.6% from the field and 15.1% from three-point land and his play has inspired article headlines like “Stephenson Move Aside, These Offseason Moves Have Worked.”
His signing is a good reminder that basketball is calculus, not algebra, like baseball. In baseball, you can throw as many star bats in the lineup together and nobody will have any issues. It’s just simple addition. But in basketball, adding a star subtracts from the star power of another player. Taking into account the calculus of basketball is important when building a team.
The whole picture of the season adds up to a disappointing start to the 2014-15 campaign for Buzz City. The team is losing close basketball games and isn’t particularly good in any one stat category. The team is 24th in points per game in the league, 18th in rebounds, 20th in assists and 16th in points allowed.
One important thing to remember with Charlotte is that they play in the Eastern Conference. If Charlotte was in the Western Conference, they would already be out of the playoff race with a 10-20 record. But sitting in the morass that is the Eastern Conference, the Hornets aren’t in too bad shape in terms of the playoff race — they are only 4 games out of the 8th seed in the East.
As bad as Charlotte’s record is, they are actually playing well against those Eastern Conference opponents, with a 7-8 record against conference opponents. Where they struggled is against a tough Western Conference slate at the beginning of the season. The team suffered a trying 10 game losing streak in November in which the Hornets played the Grizzlies, Trailblazers, Warriors twice and Mavericks. The Hornets have the seventh hardest schedule in the league, per the NBA RPI rankings, and there is only one Eastern Conference team ahead of them (Indiana).
Charlotte is looking at the playoff race from the outside now, but there are some pieces in place that can keep winning ball games down the stretch of the season. Cody Zeller and P.J. Hairston will continue to improve, Al Jefferson will continue to school fools on the left block, and Kemba Walker will continue to hit big shots for the rest of the season. Get that Stephenson chemistry issue fixed, maybe by bringing him off the bench or via a trade, and this team can still make the playoffs even after the slow start. John Hollinger’s playoff odds agree — Charlotte has a 33.2% chance of making the playoffs, with some catchable teams like Milwaukee, Boston and Indiana ahead of them in the ranks.
But should Charlotte think about going the other way? Should the Hornets use this slow start as an excuse to trade Stephenson and maybe even Al Jefferson and tank with a high lottery pick in mind? Tanking makes some sense here. The Hornets can grab assets in trades of Lance Stephenson and Big Al and grab another high upside player in the draft that can help the team develop around recently extended point guard Kemba Walker. And the alternative to tanking isn’t all that sexy.
The Hornets are chasing the 7th or 8th seed in the Eastern Conference and likely the right to be swept by Cleveland, Chicago or Toronto in the first round, like what happened for Charlotte last playoff cycle. This move would also help ease the transition from the Al Jefferson age to the Kemba Walker age by strengthening the young core of the team and setting up that core for more sustained, more lucrative success in Aprils and Mays of future years.
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However, with all that being said, I still don’t think the Hornets should tank. The key here is the Eastern Conference. If Charlotte was in the West, I would support tanking seeing how good the top of that juggernaut of a Conference is. But even the best teams in the East are vulnerable, and remember, Charlotte didn’t have a healthy Professor Al for the playoffs last season. Give a full seven game series to a healthy Jefferson and Walker, and I think they can compete even with the elites of the Eastern Conference.
Back to back playoff berths also helps this franchise keep moving forward. As nice as a high draft pick is, Hornets fans don’t want to see this team in the lottery drawings any more. The time is now for Charlotte to keep taking steps forward to become a contender in the Eastern Conference. This is an impatience fan base that would love to see some postseason success, not another high lottery pick.
Tanking has it’s benefits and drawbacks. The benefits for Charlotte would be getting another high upside player in the top of the lottery that could help extend the franchises’ shelf life as an Eastern Conference contender beyond the peak Al Jefferson years, the drawbacks are another trip to the lottery for a loyal fan base which is craving some sort of success in the NBA playoffs. Tanking is a dangerous medicine with some nasty side effects, and in this case, if I were the doctor, I wouldn’t prescribe even a drop of tanking to the Charlotte Hornets.