5 Hornets whose roles are not safe after NBA trade deadline

The Hornets had as much turnover at the trade deadline as any team in the entire league, trading two players away, waiving four, and acquiring five. All told from the start of the season, Terry Rozier, Gordon Hayward, P.J. Washington, James Bouknight, Frank Ntilikina, and Ish Smith are no longer with the team. Grant Williams, Seth Curry, Tre Mann, Vasilije Micic, and Davis Bertans have been added to the team. And Kyle Lowry has been added and since been waived by the team.

That is a pretty extreme amount of change for one team to undergo during the course of one NBA season, especially involving several players who were extremely ingrained in the rotation for several years.

As fans, it’s certainly sad to see some players go, and some of those guys earned our affection over the years (I’ll always love Terry, personally), but this team desperately needed change and some fresh faces. A lot has been made about the new players and their roles with the Hornets going forward. And there has been plenty of talk about the impact of the trades on the core pieces of the franchise.

But what hasn’t been discussed and analyzed as much, is the impact that these trades will have on the guys further down the roster; guys were getting a lot of run early in the season and were thrust into important roles - perhaps ahead of schedule and out of necessity. Let’s dig in a bit on how some of these roles will change for the rest of this season.