The Charlotte Hornets Should Learn From Other Teams’ Mistakes

The Charlotte Hornets have a franchise star in LaMelo Ball, supporting players around him, an explosive Top 10 offense, and three guys – including Ball – on the roster averaging between 19 and 20 points per game.

That’s a healthy recipe for a positive long-term outlook, especially if the organization makes it to the postseason, where they would earn valuable experience points to a team hungry for future success.

For the Hornets, who are still in the early stages of what should be a fairly long competitive window, there are valuable lessons to be had from observing the downfall of the Atlanta Hawks, who failed to capitalize on last season’s Eastern Conference Finals appearance, and could be on the outside looking in during this year’s playoffs, as they’re currently in the play-in picture as the tenth seed.

Dotting the i’s & crossing the t’s

It’s not uncommon for young teams to first establish themselves offensively before rounding out their skills in subsequent years, and the Hornets are looking at that challenge right now. For them avoid a Hawks situation in the coming years, they will need to spend the offseason diversifying their team for the 2022-2023 season.

That means designing and applying a careful step-by-step approach where the front office is constantly looking at adding pieces to the team, without minimizing the minutes and opportunities for the players they intend to keep. In Atlanta, the depth of the roster eventually worked against the team, as too many players worth minutes found themselves on the bench, which didn’t help morale.

In Charlotte, with a slew of young players coming up in form of James Bouknight, JT Thor and Kai Jones, it’s crucial there is the needed space for those players to grow, with available minutes.

That means changes around the core of the team will be necessary, such as moving off of Mason Plumlee when the time comes that Jones is ready to step into a more permanent role. It could mean pivoting away from Cody Martin, who’s averaging near-27 minutes per game this season, when Bouknight is ready to become a fully-fledged rotational player. Or, it could mean moving away from Kelly Oubre, if Miles Bridges is ready to take yet another leap, and begins to handle a bigger portion of the offense. After all, that isn’t out of the question given that he’s projected as the league’s third-best improved player.

That leads us to another point of emphasis. The Hawks blended youth and veteran leadership, signing both Bogdan Bogdanovic to pair with Trae Young, while already having players on the roster who could fill those minutes in John Collins, De’Andre Hunter, and Cam Reddish, the latter of which is now with the Knicks as a direct result of wanting a chance to play.

Charlotte has to tip-toe that line better than the Hawks did, by identifying the players they believe will be long-term options for them early, and be willing to pull the trigger on moving players around the periphery of the core.

To fans, that may sound like the ultimate “duh” point, but for small market teams, there is often a tendency to hang onto rotation players for too long, either due to declining trade value or due to a lack of alternatives. Buddy Hield spent about three years too long with the Kings, which is an obvious example of a situation that should have been resolved a lot earlier.

Additionally, finding the right timing to make trades can be complicated. Should a team be ready to lean into an inexperienced second-year player who has a good 10-game stretch, knowing that such production might be a fluke? Are their young players actually best suited for bench roles for an additional season before it’s wise to bump them up as starters? Or, alternatively, are they not playing a young guy enough minutes who clearly deserves them?

These are questions team ask themselves all the time, and it isn’t always easy to know. Let’s take the Chicago Bulls as example. They have started rookie Ayo Dosunmu for 30 games this season, initially out of necessity, but he turned out to excel in that role. The expectation level of Dosunmu before the start of the season was he probably wouldn’t play more than 10 minutes per game, but he proved he was able to handle more through solid production.

Those are situations the Hornets need to identify, just as they have to identify the opposite of a wunderkind, and know when to scale back.

Keeping sight of a winning progress

Putting together a winning team is one of the most difficult things to do in the NBA, and once again we’re looking at a balancing act. If players are given a significant chunk of years together, that isn’t fielding results on the court, trading for fit becomes even more vital, even at the expense of talent.

The Orlando Magic spent six seasons pairing up Nikola Vucevic, Aaron Gordon and Evan Fournier, and have just two first-round exits to show for it. Eventually, they tore it all down to start over, suggesting they’re still a few years away from making substantial noise.

For the Hornets, it’s a bit different, although the Magic example does remain relevant. Having a clear-cut franchise player in Ball is undoubtedly going to be a ceiling-raiser the Magic never had. However, there’s a decent chance that Gordon Hayward, who turns 32 in late March, has peaked and will get slightly worse year-by-year, just as it’s fair to wonder if Terry Rozier, 28, will ever have as much trade value as he does right now, which also factors into the larger picture of optimizing assets and keeping the team on a similar age curve.

But most importantly, the Hornets need to make this worth it for their key players. They need to be seeing and sensing year-to-year steps, that brings them closer to becoming a powerhouse.