Charlotte Hornets Offseason Review: Still Larvae

Waiting for emergence, and a curious roster build

Photo by Bee Safe on Unsplash

TL;DR CHARLOTTE HORNETS

• Traded for Pat Connaughton, and Collin Sexton

• Signed Mason Plumlee for some reason

• Signed Spencer Dinwiddie, for some other reason

• Dealt Mark Williams and Jusuf Nurkic

• Drafted Kon Knueppel, Liam McNeeley, Sion James, and Ryan Kalkbrenner, in what must be the most annoying names to spell draft lineup in history

• Re-signed Tre Mann

• Did not trade Miles Bridges — who should not be in the NBA— certifying that they could not have a good offseason

ADDITIONS

• I love the guard acquisitions.

  • Sexton has been a good target for the last few years. He’s actually impactful.

  • Connaughton is perfectly serviceable in a rotation. Adding more NBA players is good.

• Plumlee is a tough one.

  • I’m partial to him because he was really good for Denver and got scapegoated because a bad jump shooter hit one shot on him in a bubble with no fans.

  • His box score metrics are bad.

  • His individual box metrics (EPM) are bad.

  • His eye test is bad.

  • However…

    • Mase was the only player with more than 1000 minutes played on the Suns with a positive net rating.

    • The defense, while bad with him on-court, was 2.3 points better than with him on the bench despite all their attempts at various center solutions.

  • I'm not going to sit here and say he’s going to have a great season. But he’s a perfectly fine center to help Moussa Diabate develop and provide better consistency and reliability than Mark Williams. He’s a stop gap, and that’s fine.

• I was meh on the draft.

  • Kon was the safe choice, so it wasn’t my preferred option for them. It’s a shame word got out about Ace, because VJ would have been so perfect here. Kneuppel will make some shots and do some stuff and that’s fine, but I have low expectations.

  • McNeeley was a good get where they got him

• Dinwiddie is fine… but we’ll get to why it was weird in a bit.

LOSSES

• It’s a bummer the Seth Curry era in Charlotte ended the way it did.

• Williams is a guy who looks good in highlights and in the advanced metrics but drove Hornets fans nuts with his inconsistency and work ethic even before the injury stuff.

• Nurkic is addition by subtraction.