Buzz City Beat: Where Charlotte ranks in the East, Knicks interested in Ramon Sessions
Buzz City Beat is Swarm and Sting’s one stop for the best articles from around the internet surrounding the Charlotte Hornets.
The Las Vegas Summer league is starting to come to an end as the knockout stage has started. In this edition of Buzz City Beat, we look at where the Charlotte Hornets rank among Eastern Conference teams, the New York Knicks interest in Ramon Sessions and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist as a top-100 player in the NBA.
Where Charlotte ranks in the East (PalmBeachPost.com)
"Added Dwight Howard and drafted Malik Monk. Oh, and the Hornets still have Kemba Walker and Nicolas Batum. The Hornets have enough talent to make the playoffs this season. Charlotte needed a reliable interior presence and Howard should be a good fit. The combination of Walker and Howard will be fun to watch."
This article ranks the Hornets as the seventh best team in the Eastern Conference behind the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Boston Celtics, the Washington Wizards, the Toronto Raptors, the Miami Heat and the Milwaukee Bucks. Seventh may seem a bit low but until Charlotte shows that they are better than their 11th place finish from last season. They may have added a few players this summer but we haven’t yet seen how much better they will make the team.
There’s an outside chance that the Hornets could end up being a top five team in the East by the end of the regular season. Charlotte arguably has a better roster than the Heat and the Bucks but it is rather close and I would predict that those three team will be close in the standings this season. It’s clear that just about everyone expects the Hornets to be back in the playoffs this year.
Knicks interested in Ramon Sessions (RealGM.com)
"The Knicks also have interest in Ramon Sessions and Donald Sloan on the free agent market."
Charlotte declined Sessions’ team option before July 1st which made him an unrestricted free agent. The 31-year old only appeared in 50 games for the Hornets in 2016-17 and missed the second half of the season because of a torn meniscus. It’s pretty surprising to see a team showing interest in Ramon after such a down season but he has been a quality backup option for years.
After drafting point guard Frank Ntilikina eighth overall, the Knicks are now looking for a veteran to pair with the rookie. New York reportedly has Eric Bledsoe on their radar as well. Even though Sessions won’t be wearing purple and teal next year, it will be interesting to see where he ends up.
MKG a top-100 player in the NBA? (FanRagSports.com)
"While his floor is high, his ceiling is low since he is so limited on the offensive end. We’ll cover the offensive issue more in the next section, but for now, suffice to say that in an age where defensive wings are best equipped with 3-point range, Kidd-Gilchrist has made just seven treys in his career."
Next: Projecting Charlotte's starting lineup for 2017-18 season
According to this site, MKG is a top-100 player in the league but just barely as he comes in at No. 99. The experts give him a floor of 105 and a ceiling of 90 which seems rather fair for a player that hasn’t proven he can knock down a shot outside of 17-feet consistently. The only reason the Hornets’ small forward ranks this high is because of his great individual defense.