Charlotte Hornets: Bringing the Sting, September Mailbag

The Charlotte Hornets are one of the most intriguing teams in the NBA following an eventful offseason – one which saw Kelly Oubre, James Bouknight, and Kai Jones enter the organization. That also means there are lots of questions surrounding the team.

This is the start of a Hornets mailbag series, one which I will answer questions asked by you on Twitter. I have not decided whether this will be a weekly/monthly series.

Charlotte Hornets September Mailbag

With that said, let’s get into it.

Wes asks, “Any important games to watch?”

Well, the simple answer is that every NBA game counts the exact same – for 1/82nd of your team’s record. However, in terms of meaningfulness, one could argue that each of the Hornets’ national television appearances are more significant than their average game.

Charlotte is set to play four games on ESPN and four games on NBATV. Those will likely set up the national media’s discourse and public opinion around the team, since that is when most people will be watching the Hornets play. The first of those games is October 29th in Miami.

Tyler asks “What do you think are the most important attributes that make a 2nd rounder successful?”

Well, one of the more obvious answers here is shooting. If we take a look back at the 2018 NBA Draft (the one which Devonte’ Graham was taken, five of the seven 2nd-rounders that has played more than 3000 career minutes are shooting above 35-percent from three in their career.

If they are not good shooters, then they have to have either great defense or great playmaking. Bruce Brown, Mitchell Robinson, and De’Anthony Melton are all good case studies of that.

@DailyDribble1 asks, “What do you believe the Hornets’ roof is for the upcoming season?”

As Michael Jordan said several years ago, “The ceiling is the roof”

On a more serious note, it’s hard to pin down how good the Hornets can be this coming season. First, there’s a lot of growth from players such as LaMelo Ball, Miles Bridges, and PJ Washington in the equation, as well as a fully healthy roster entering the season.

At the absolute peak, the Hornets are probably a top-4 seed in the Eastern Conference – but for that to actually happen, we need incredible progression from essentially every player on the roster, as well as major contributions from both first-round draft picks.

@nickdenning asks, “How many games in before we start unnecessarily start blaming Plumlee for the Hornets rebounding issues?”

Zero games. This will begin in the preseason and continue throughout Plumlee’s tenure. It’ll be this way even if the Hornets are the best rebounding team in the NBA – this I firmly believe.

The Hornets have been a poor rebounding team for quite some time, and their offseason additions did not exactly fix that problem. However, with that said, rebounding matters the least of all major counting statistics – and there is no correlation between high-level rebounding and major success in the modern NBA.

Noah asks, “How do you expect the minutes distribution to shake out for a fully healthy roster?”

Well, there’s a lot of mouths to feed and only a limited amount of minutes to give out per game. Gordon Hayward, LaMelo Ball, and Terry Rozier will see the most minutes night-to-night, and everything else will probably fluctuate. I’ll have an additional piece out on this topic in the coming weeks, but here is what I think, just off of the top of my head:

Ball – 30-40 minutes
Hayward – 30-40 minutes
Rozier – 30-40 minutes
Bridges – 25+ minutes
Oubre – 25+ minutes
Washington 25+ minutes
Plumlee – 15-25 minutes
Bouknight – <20 minutes
Smith – <20 minutes

@BoldSlugger asks, “Would you rather fight one LaMelo-sized Hornet, or 100 hornet-sized LaMelos?

I was stung by a wasp for the first time this past summer, and I’ve heard that Hornet stings are significantly worse than that. I’ll take the 100 Hornet-sized LaMelos. Well, thinking more about it, if the big hornet looks like Hugo, I could take him.