The Conversation: Have the Hornets quietly put a nice core together?

What if this is the year that LaMelo Ball stays healthy? As bad as the Charlotte Hornets' 2024-25 season was, they had a positive point differential in the 466 minutes he played with Brandon Miller and the 879 minutes he played with Miles Bridges. Ball is a wildly divisive player, but his vision and his touch are undeniable. This is his sixth season in Charlotte, and he showed long ago that he can lead an efficient offense. In the East, as long as the defense isn't dreadful, that might be enough to get into the play-in, especially if young wings Miller (the No. 2 pick in 2023) and Kon Knueppel (the No. 4 pick this year) produce at a high level.

About that defense, though: The team's two best defenders -- Josh Green and Grant Williams -- will be sidelined at the beginning of the season, and, when Ball was on the court last season, the Hornets' halfcourt defense allowed 104.1 points per 100 possessions, which basically means it was hopeless. (As a point of reference, Phoenix gave up a league-worst 102.5 per 100 in the halfcourt.) Charlotte is alarmingly thin at center, with Moussa Diabaté, Mason Plumlee and rookie Ryan Kalkbrenner competing for minutes, and it's flush with offense-first guards, having added Collin Sexton and Spencer Dinwiddie to a roster that already included Ball, Tre Mann and summer league standout K.J. Simpson. 

You can envision a world in which the Hornets are buyers at the deadline, having shown the front office that it's worth adding reinforcements. You can also, however, envision them going the other way. 

The State of Play

Last year: Ball led all Eastern Conference guards in All-Star fan voting, but didn't make the cut because the players had him third, the media had him seventh and the coaches didn't vote him in as a reserve. After an insane late-November stretch that included a 50-point game in Milwaukee and a 44-point game against Orlando two days later, Ball was sidelined with a strained calf. Later he dealt with ankle and wrist injuries, so he ended up playing only 47 games. That was 20 more than Miller managed, as his season ended when he had wrist surgery in January. The Hornets were 8-28 when they traded center Nick Richards to the Suns in the middle of that month, and they were 12-36 when they tried to trade center Mark Williams to the Lakers at the trade deadline in February. That deal was controversially rescinded, so Mark Williams returned to a center rotation that featured Diabaté and Jusuf Nurkić, the latter of whom was acquired on deadline day from Phoenix along with a first-round pick in exchange for Cody Martin and Vasilije Micić. Charlotte finished 19-63, with the league's second-worst offense and fourth-worst net rating.

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Sam Quinn

The offseason: The Hornets drafted Knueppel with the No. 4 pick, wing Sion James with the No. 33 pick and Kalkbrenner with the No. 34 pick. They somehow picked up a future second-round pick by trading Nurkić for Sexton, and they also made yet another trade with the Suns, giving up Mark Williams (for real this time) and Micić for the No. 29 pick (which they used on forward Liam McNeely) and a 2029 first-rounder. In free agency, they reunited with Plumlee and signed Dinwiddie, both for the minimum, and they re-signed Mann to a three-year, $24 million deal.

Las Vegas over/under: 27.5 wins, per BetMGM

The Conversation

Hornets believer: The most important thing I have to say is that Kon is a pro. If you just watch Knueppel play for five minutes, you can see it all: The processing speed, the shooting, the off-ball movement, the competitiveness, the physicality. He reminds me so much of Desmond Bane, and I think he's the perfect kind of prospect for this team: He'll be a stabilizing force and solid complementary player from Day 1, plus he has star upside. With him and Brandon Miller on the wing, I feel better about the Hornets' core than I have in ages. In a few weeks, everybody's going to say Miller is having a "breakout" season, and it will only be half-true. Yes, I expect him to take a step forward, but even if he comes back the exact same player as he was before his wrist injury, his efficiency will tick up naturally because he won't have to carry a crazy load anymore.

Hornets skeptic: I sure hope that's true about Miller. In his rookie season I really liked how he stepped up when Ball was out, but the numbers in those minutes last season -- 51.4% true shooting and 31% usage -- were discouraging. And with all due respect to Knueppel, the perfect prospect for this team would have been the guy he played with in college and went No. 1 to Dallas. Bane is an interesting comp, but what if Knueppel is more like Gordon Hayward? I don't mean the younger, much more athletic version; I mean the one the Hornets had a couple of years ago. At this level, Knueppel's poor foot speed and generally unremarkable athleticism could be major issues, especially on defense. And if this team is going to continue to build around LaMelo Ball -- if you like, we can debate the wisdom of this! -- then the other guys need to be plus defenders.

Hornets believer: You know what I meant about Knueppel. Winning the lottery would have been nice, obviously, but, failing that, it was ideal to get a player who will be at least a solid connective role player right away and could be closer to a primary playmaker down the road. Young Hayward isn't a bad comp in that respect, but Knueppel is much stronger than Hayward was at this stage. He was definitely a plus defender at Duke, and, unless Charles Lee asks him to press small guards 94 feet for some reason, I don't see quickness being much of a problem. Re: Ball, let me guess … you think the one-legged 3s are silly, he's not a winning player and the Hornets should just trade him?

Hornets skeptic: I wouldn't put it quite like that. At this point, though, the burden is on Ball to prove that he is a winning player. Defensively, he can make amazing reads off the ball, but he's not always engaged and he needs to put up much more resistance one-on-one. Offensively, he might have the best highlights in the whole league, but the shot selection is still a mess and he still doesn't put much pressure on the rim as a driver. I want to see him improve his finishing, get to the line more often and generally be more intentional when he's initiating in the halfcourt. I also want to see him simply be available more often, as he's played just 105 total games over the last three seasons. Should the Hornets trade him? I mean, if I were them, I'd at least listen to offers. Given that he's signed to a contract that will pay him $46.4 million in 2028-29, though, I doubt they're getting a ton of calls about him.

Hornets believer: We are talking about a 24-year-old who has already made an All-Star team and averaged 25 points per game in an NBA season. We are also talking about one of the most creative passers on the planet. Ball is far from a finished product, but that's to be expected. And between the injuries and the questionable decisions the franchise has made since drafting him, he hasn't exactly been in the best position to develop over the past few years. Still, he's gotten much stronger, and I've seen flashes of him improving in some of the ways you've outlined. Especially when Grant Williams and Josh Green get healthy, I think this year's Hornets will be able to put lineups on the court that minimize his weaknesses and accentuate his strengths much more effectively than they have recently. And in the spirit of being patient with young players, I must note that I'm curious to see if Tidjane Salaün is part of the solution in 2025-26. Charlotte knew he was a project when it drafted him, and he looked a lot more comfortable at summer league than he did as a rookie.

Hornets skeptic: I'm not writing off Salaün before his 21st birthday, but I'm not getting my hopes up, either, and I'd be more optimistic about the Hornets if they'd taken Matas Buzelis instead. I'm glad you brought him up, though, because I sort of feel about him the way I feel about the team. As a prospect, Salaün's main selling points were that he plays extremely hard and has a high ceiling by virtue of his physical tools. In the same way, the idea of the Hornets is intriguing every year. Maybe Ball stays healthy and rounds out his game, maybe they turn into fun League Pass team that puts up tons of points and gets enough stops to string some wins together. But you can't seriously expect either Charlotte or the guy it picked No. 6 in 2024 to do anything serious this season, can you?