Charlotte Hornets season preview
The NBA season will be here before you know it and FanSided is here to get you ready. In the lead up to Opening Night, we’ll be previewing two teams each day, reviewing roster changes, discussing important players and challenges, and hearing the perspective of our FanSided site experts. Let’s get ready for basketball!
Roster changes
Inputs: Marco Belinelli (SF, traded from Sacramento Kings); Roy Hibbert (C, signed for one year, $5 million); Ramon Sessions (PG, signed for two years, $12.3 million); Christian Wood (PF, signed for one year, partially guaranteed)
Outputs: Jeremy Lin (PG, signed with the Brooklyn Nets); Al Jefferson (C, signed with the Indiana Pacers); Courtney Lee (SG, signed with the New York Knicks)
Retained: Marvin Williams (PF, signed for four years, $54.5 million), Nicolas Batum (SG, signed for five years, $120 million); Brian Roberts (PG, signed for one year, $1.1 million)
Most important player
With Al Jefferson’s old school, back-to-the-basket post game and immaculate footwork now gone to Indiana, the Hornets are firmly and completely Kemba Walker’s team on the offensive side of the ball. However, Steve Clifford has given the Hornets a decidedly defense-first identity in his first three seasons in Charlotte. As such, the most important player is the most important defender, a man who missed all but seven games a season ago after much-ballyhooed improvement to his jump shot. Small forward Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is the key to how the Hornets can improve in a tougher Eastern Conference.
Though it is a limited sample size, the Hornets were a much better team nearly across the board with Kidd-Gilchrist on the floor than off it last season. In 205 minutes of play, Charlotte saw vast improvement in both offensive and defensive rebound percentage and defensive efficiency. His impact was not limited to the defensive side of the ball, either: with him on the floor, the Hornets’ assist percentage and effective field goal percentage both rose. Though there remain some kinks – namely, Charlotte’s turnover rate rose noticeably with lineups featuring Kidd-Gilchrist – the 23-year-old wing provides such defensive virtuosity that his team can withstand his hiccups.
The ceiling for Kidd-Gilchrist is somewhere below Kawhi Leonard in its absolute, rosiest shade of optimism, but the tenacity that he has shown and willingness to adapt in his first four seasons are intangibles of the highest order. If he can stay healthy, and the flashes of offensive improvement carry over from last season, the Hornets will have a real chance at winning their first playoff series since 2002.
Most important addition
As much fun as it would be to chart Roy Hibbert’s precipitous downfall in the last three years and frame it as a potential Most Improved Player campaign waiting to happen, the Hornets mainly took this offseason to retain key players and fill in gaps around Kemba Walker and company. For the most part, the key pieces are there already, assuming health.
The additions Charlotte did make, however, pique some interest, with perhaps no new face being more enticing than that of Marco Belinelli. An NBA champion in 2014 with the San Antonio Spurs, Belinelli is coming off one of the worst years of his professional career with the Sacramento Kings. He averaged career lows in field goal percentage, effective field goal percentage and three-point percentage, all of which are problematic for a guy known primarily for his shooting prowess.
Even so, Belinelli has proven he can be an effective piece of a playoff team, having shot 42 percent from three in 23 games for the Spurs during that 2014 run. Because the Hornets will be struggling to create points with bench units due to the departures of Al Jefferson and Jeremy Lin, Steve Clifford will likely look to Belinelli in spots. Because of his shooting and experience, Belinelli may even see more time than Jeremy Lamb.
Next: Atlanta Hawks season preview
What does success look like?
— Jerry Stephens, @SwarmnSting, Swarm and Sting
Success for the Charlotte Hornets in the 2016-17 means not only making the playoffs but winning their first round series. It may seem like a long shot from where the team was just a few short seasons ago but fans are expecting more from them with the added talent and recent improvements.
After winning 48 games and pushing the Miami Heat to seven games in their first round match-up last season, there is a lot of buzz surrounding the Hornets this year. Charlotte hasn’t made back-to-back playoff appearances since 2000-01 to 2001-02. They have also not won a playoff series since 2001-02 which means that they will need to break some old trends this season. They don’t need to win 50+ games or win their division to be successful, the Hornets need to focus on just making the playoffs, avoiding the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round, and then advancing past their opponents to make it to the Conference Semifinals.
Even if they are swept in their second round series, the 2016-17 season will still be seen as a success because they finally won a playoff series after over a decade of failure. The Hornets are a team on the rise and their play surprised many teams last season. Their opponents will now be ready and the Queen City team must continue to improve and play team oriented basketball with an emphasis on defense. Regular season success would be nice but Charlotte’s desperate for a series win in the postseason to justify a successful season.