National pundits still aren't high on the Charlotte Hornets, despite some awesome offseason work by the front office. What else is new? The latest big-name analyst to give their two cents on the Hornets' situation is insider Zach Lowe, who says that Charlotte won't have a chance of being relevant unless Brandon Miller becomes an All-Star.
"This is going nowhere, I'm talking nowhere for the next five years, nowhere interesting, nowhere close to interesting, interesting you can't even see with a telescope. This is going nowhere if Brandon Miller isn't an All-Star," Lowe said.
Now, let's clarify that he's likely talking about Miller consistently playing at the level of an All-Star, not simply being named to the All-Star team in a particular season. But his overall point remains that in his mind, that's the only path for Charlotte to reach relevancy in the East, and I think that's a flawed argument for a few reasons.
The first of which being the current weakened state of the Eastern Conference. Cooper Flagg just went to Dallas, and there are multiple East contenders set to be majorly weakened by injuries next season. There's a very clear opportunity in the short-term for just about any team in the East to sneak into the postseason picture in 2025-26.
Zach Lowe: Hornets won't succeed if Miller isn't All-Star
That's of course just a short-term argument. But it's not even considering the fact that there's reasonably several other avenues for the Hornets to become a winner again in the big picture. LaMelo Ball, entering year six of his professional career, still has plenty of room to grow at just 23 years old.
Then there's Miles Bridges to consider. What largely got lost in last season was the impressive campaign Bridges put together, especially after Miller was unfortunately ruled out for the season in January. Miles has been getting back to his 2021-22 form when he himself was playing like an All-Star.
And even if Miller doesn't reach All-Star level production consistently, he's still far from a bad player. Charlotte can reasonably still achieve a lot of team success even if he's operating at a slightly above-average level, because Brandon's talent speaks for itself.
At the end of the day, the Hornets' roster is far more built out and reliably built than it was in years past. This argument that Lowe is making is the kind of one that would have applied to this team in the old days, but no longer. Brandon Miller is entirely likely to continue growing and become a perennial All-Star in this league. But even if he doesn't, it's far from a doomsday scenario for this team.