20 things to look forward to this NBA offseason

19. Are the Hornets headed for a fire sale?

The Dwight Howard era in Charlotte lasted only one year.

On the day before the 2018 NBA draft, the Charlotte Hornets agreed to send Howard to the Brooklyn Nets in exchange for the corpse of Timofey Mozgov and two second-round picks, according to Wojnarowski. The deal helped the Hornets duck under the luxury-tax threshold, although it came at the expense of their short-term competitiveness and 2019-20 cap sheet, when Mozgov will be making $16.7 million.

With both Kemba Walker and Jeremy Lamb heading into the final year of their respective contracts, it’s fair to wonder whether the Howard trade signaled a wave of more drastic changes on the horizon.

On Friday, new Hornets general manager described Walker as “the focal point of this franchise moving forward, adding, “this is a player that we hope is with us — not only for the next couple of years, but ends his career here.” He acknowledged, however, that because Walker is on such a below-market deal at the moment, he’ll have no financial incentive to negotiate an extension before becoming an unrestricted free agent in 2019.

The Hornets can offer Walker more than any other team on a new deal next summer, but they’re also in salary-cap purgatory for the next two seasons. Other than Charlotte’s financial advantage, he’ll have little reason to see out the remainder of his prime on a team that has no foreseeable route toward championship contention.

Will the Hornets realize that before it’s too late and trade him for whatever they can get this summer? If not, they’ll run the risk of losing both him and Lamb for nothing next July.