The Charlotte Hornets’ season could easily be a lame duck year, but Jeremy Lamb and James Borrego will be the primary pieces that could prevent that.
The Charlotte Hornets could absolutely take this as a lame duck year. Maybe they even should. After all, it has to be tempting to do nothing but prioritize the future when you’re already two or three tiers away from the top level teams in the East, a set of teams that are likely to get crushed by their eventual Finals opponent.
But these are the Charlotte Hornets, and despite Charlotte technically being a larger market than it gets credit for due to a population explosion in recent years, they still operate like a small market team. They can’t afford to go and execute an organized tank, and they definitely can’t afford a lame duck year in which they flounder with no hope and no theoretical reason to believe they can be better.
And this year brings yet another set of reasons du jour as to why they should be a playoff team. Last year, it was bringing Dwight Howard in, getting rid of Ramon Sessions, drafting exciting rookie Malik Monk, and potentially better health and end-of-game luck. This year, it’s shipping Dwight Howard out (upon realizing that he was awful), getting rid of Ramon Sessions replacement Michael Carter-Williams, drafting exciting rookie Miles Bridges, and potentially better health and end-of-game luck.
Which means that in actuality, the real reasons that the Hornets will get better could be found there, but much more likely is that the improvement comes from the things not on that list: New starter Jeremy Lamb, and new head coach James Borrego (which is Spanish for lamb — technically one that’s under a year old).
Jeremy Lamb is in an odd place because very few players make leaps like he did in their age-25 season. In fact, that’s the first season that the league average player does not improve in Box Plus-Minus. But in large part due to finally receiving an actual role, Lamb thrived.
Lamb’s plight under Steve Clifford could be traced back all the way to his first season here. In 2015-16, he played next to fellow Jeremy, Jeremy Lin, in the bench back-court, and played well at the start of the season, only to inexplicably lose minutes to P.J. Hairston and Troy Daniels. And that one kind of made some sense — Troy Daniels was at least debatably as good as Lamb so there wasn’t too much outcry over it.
But then 2016-17 rolled around, and Lamb shared the bench wing role with Marco Belinelli. Marco was awful on both ends, likely due to an ankle injury that sapped his quickness and made some of his already questionable shots into inexcusable ones. And yet Lamb, who was better on a night in/night out basis, would consistently be the odd man out in rotations. Belinelli, who was the sixth best wing on the Hornets’ roster that year, would consistently receive the second-most minutes behind only Nicolas Batum.
Last year, Rich Cho simply gave Steve Clifford no other options. Even before training camp, his only alternatives to Lamb were rookie Dwayne Bacon and Treveon Graham (Who was equally ridiculously neglected in the prior year). And then Nicolas Batum tore his Ulnar Collateral Ligament in a preseason game. Lamb got the start and thrived both there and as a spark off the bench.
The hope, then, is that Lamb will be able to improve with an even larger role this season. He’s always been more and more effective the more he’s trusted with a larger role, and this is effectively the largest role they can give him. He appears to be the second option in the preseason starting lineup offense only to Kemba, and right around the same level of priority as Cody Zeller (The Hornets have been running their own twists on a lot of Celtics style dribble hand-off stuff this preseason which pushes whoever the center is way up the offensive priority rankings).
As for the Hispanic lamb, our Andrew Bernucca already ran a breakdown of Borrego here, and I’ll refer you to that in the place of repeating things that have already been covered. But crucially, one thing that was not touched on in that article is that Borrego appears, so far, to have a much better finger than Steve Clifford on the pulse of what this roster is good at. The defense has gone from one of the most conservative, unswitching teams, to being extremely switchy during the preseason. Which makes a lot more sense for a team with seven wings, all of whom have above average athleticism.
The offense, which is playing in 2018 and therefore is less efficient in the halfcourt, is pushing more for transition possessions. Frank Kaminsky isn’t playing the power forward position anymore. Cody Zeller has the starting role that he’s deserved for basically every year past his rookie season but inexplicably never once been guaranteed. And so on. The list of places where Steve Clifford really didn’t understand his personnel is long enough to reach his current location in Orlando if printed out.
Of course, there are some guys that are being displaced into roles that may be worse for them by the limitations of the roster, and that may be an error on Borrego’s part. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist has historically struggled to guard taller power forwards and also struggles to attack into them and finish at the rim. Malik Monk was marginally better at the point guard last year, per NBAWowy.com, averaging a better true shooting percentage and a higher assist rate from there. But in both cases, those could absolutely be more about how Steve Clifford elected for those positions to operate. For example, in the more proactive, switching defense, Kidd-Gilchrist has looked fine defending power forwards, and while his offense has looked a little weird from there at times, it always does even when it’s successful. That could indicate that he may well be fine with the way that Borrego chooses for the power forward to operate and that it’s not a mistake just because it would’ve been under the old regime.
Now, Borrego will still have to be delicate. There’s a good chance that an old regime veteran gets dropped into a lesser role than he thinks he deserves. In the preseason so far, Willy Hernangomez appears to have the lead for the backup center spot, which could leave Frank Kaminsky out of the rotation entirely after playing almost 5500 minutes in the last three years. Nicolas Batum appears to be the quaternary option in lineups involving all five starters and may be better suited to coming off of the bench to match both his current level of output, as well as grant him more touches.
And neither of those things is a move that can be made without considering the egos involved. Kaminsky specifically has talked about how his confidence affects his level of play, and not playing at all almost certainly wouldn’t help that. But they may be moves that have to happen for the good of the team.
But even if those two Lambs are huge improvements, it’s absolutely possible that something else still torpedoes the Hornets’ season. Tony Parker is a little old, in case anyone somehow missed that, and hasn’t had the best of success since tearing his quadriceps in the 2017 playoffs. The ability of the entire roster outside of Kidd-Gilchrist, Williams, and Zeller, to defend anything is very questionable, though Lamb and Kaminsky look like they may have taken the step forward from horrendous to merely bad on the defensive end based on preseason play. And ultimately, it’s entirely possible that by mid-season this team is 18-23 and forced to pull the trigger on the best Kemba Walker offer they can find.
But in the meantime, Lamb and Borrego are going to do what they can to improve the results just enough to sell Kemba Walker on sticking around because they kept this year from being a lame duck.