Charlotte Hornets: Nicolas Batum is Focused on Becoming a Better Scorer

Nicolas Batum is committed to improving his scoring ability for next season as the Charlotte Hornets are in need of a consistent secondary scorer.

Nic Batum has already announced that he’s skipping EuroBasket 2017 with the French National Team this summer in order to focus on his individual play with the Charlotte Hornets. It’s no coincidence that he’s going to use the offseason to mainly improve his scoring. He said in his recent exit interview that “I really want to stay focused on my game, because I know I’ve got to be more of a scorer next year.”

Even though he’s been the team’s second-leading scorer, behind Kemba Walker, each of the last two seasons, the 28-year old has been too unselfish at times. Although Batum averaged a career-high 15.1 points per game this past season, that mark was still near the bottom of the league in terms of second scoring options.

He was the eighth-lowest secondary scorer in the NBA last year only ahead of Robert Covington (12.9), Darren Collison (13.2) Dirk Nowitzki (14.2), Jeremy Lin (14.5), Reggie Jackson (14.5), Nikola Vucevic (14.6) and Jordan Clarkson (14.7). All of these player’s teams had the same thing in common. Each of them missed the playoffs, including Nicolas and the Hornets.

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If Batum wants to become a better scorer, he needs to focus on being more aggressive on offense. He needs to look for his own shot more rather than deferring to his teammates. He can still be an all-around playmaker and create shots for other players but he needs to get more shots up himself.

He only averaged 12.6 field goal attempts per game which ranked 60th in the league. (NBA.com) Compare that to Kemba’s 18.3 per game. Nicolas shouldn’t shoot as much as Walker but their numbers need to be closer than almost a six shot differential every night.

The struggle for Batum is that he’s never been relied upon this much as a scoring option. Throughout his career, he’s always been more of a third or even fourth option on offense. Charlotte’s took the risk of signing him to a massive five-year, $120 million deal and they are banking on him being a consistent secondary scorer alongside Kemba. He’s being paid like a superstar and he needs to up his play in order to justify that contract.

When asked what the biggest improvement he wanted to make on the court was, Batum said:

"“Everything. I really want to stay focused on my game because I know I got to be, maybe, more [of a] scorer next year. I tried maybe too much to be an all-around player and facilitate the game for the other guys and be too unselfish sometimes and I’ve got to stop that. I want to try to focus and work on that and find different ways to score the ball.”"

Here’s the full video of Nicolas’ exit interview:

As you can tell, he’s focused on improving his individual game this summer. He wants to come back better for next season as he and the team attempt to bounce back from the down year they just had. When he’s aggressive and looking for his shot, the France international plays his best. Just take a look at these highlights.

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While Batum is already a great complimentary player, he needs to become a true second option for the Charlotte Hornets going forward. They struggled to score at times this past season when Kemba Walker wasn’t on the court. Not many of their players have the ability to create their own shots so it is important for Nic to be aggressive and get good looks on the offensive end.

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