It’s tough to say goodbye to your franchise player after eight years, but the Charlotte Hornets and Kemba Walker split may benefit both sides.
Yes, it stings. Yes, the Charlotte Hornets will most likely be a bottom five team in the league next year. Yes, the fan base is upset and a drop in attendance is surely to come, but Michael Jordan and Mitch Kupchak made the right move for the franchise by letting Kemba Walker leave.
I will start by asking you to not put a name or a face with the player I am about to present to you, it will be hard, but try. This will remove the emotional attachment fans get with players.
What if I told you Player A had been with the Hornets for eight seasons, and during that time the team averaged 33 wins per season with two playoff appearances, both first round losses.
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In the seven seasons prior to Player A’s arrival, the team averaged 32 wins per season and made the playoffs once which resulted in a first round exit. The highest seed Player A led his team to was sixth in his eight seasons, while without him the highest seed the Bobcats obtained was seventh. Not much difference is it?
Imagine Player A has flourished into an All Star, even a 3rd team All-NBA player, but yet his team couldn’t win forty games with him. Now imagine that very same player qualifies for a supermax extension; would you give it to him based on the numbers I just gave you and about the most important stat, winning? You can put up big offensive numbers but if your team isn’t winning then how valuable are you in reality?
Now calm down, I’m not blaming Kemba Walker for the shortcomings of this franchise. That was years in the making with bad free agent signings, bad drafts and to make matters worse, extending those very same bad draft picks. All of those decisions cost the Charlotte Hornets, what many fans consider, the best player to ever put on their uniform.
It doesn’t appear that the Hornets are going to fully embrace a rebuild, especially with the Terry Rozier signing, but Kupchak can have some semblance of starting over and constructing the roster like he wants while not being up against the luxury tax line.
They can actually have a strategy to be a contender in the Eastern Conference and not just strive for the 8th seed every single year, something the fan base had grown tiresome of as evidence by the attendance records for this year. That number represents a 5 percent decline in attendance from when the team last made the playoffs in 2016.
The argument can’t be made that losing Kemba would lose fans because they were losing fans anyway.
In summary, no case can be made for Jordan and the Charlotte Hornets to pay Walker $200 million for one more win on average per season and fleeting fan interest. I appreciate the time he has given us, the memories — everything — but it was best to move on, for both parties.