Big Nick Energy: The Nick Richards Thread

[MasterIchiro]

Nick is addition by subtraction. Similar to Hayward, not Rozier. And we got Mann for Gordon. And we got a longterm asset (Heat 1st) that could be used later to make an upgrade. The comparison should be between Rozier and our longterm SG replacement, not Green.

[JMAC3]

And how are we still talking about Kelly oubre?
The man is shooting 28% from three this year nothing he does impacts winning. When the Sixers lost their starters it's not like Kelly dragged a crappy team to some wins. If the Sixers are good it has nothing to do with kelly. Everything to do with the other stars on that team.

42% Off EPM, 90% Def EPM... 71% Overall EPM Kelly Oubre. The guy that 80% of the board blamed us for only winning 27 games, got rid of him and won 21 games... but don't worry he was addition by subtraction.

Got rid of Rozier and PJ last year and now we have 7 wins, but don't worry addition by subtraction.

All preached as addition by subtraction moves- the same as Richards. Maybe Richards isn't great but this is what happens on this board every year and yet somehow the subtraction of those players never leads to more wins.

[luciano-davidwesley]

I get what you're saying, but how seriously can we take defensive EPM if Kelly Oubre is in the 90th percentile!

[JDR720]

I don't think we really have any addition by subtraction players. Like, PJ and Kelly/Rozier (before their teams tanked for various reasons) proved we have players who can contribute to good teams. Like, stick Nick on the Knicks and he'd be a double-double threat as their backup C and fit well with Towns and Brunson.

We just don't have many addition players in general. Besides Mark, Melo and Miller everyone else is neutral at best. And honestly... are we sure those 3 are actually "addition" players? Mark has missed most of his career games thus far, Melo is a stat sheet stuffer but as we talked about in his thread, he's erratic and makes bad decisions. And Miller... well hopefully his play this season is a sophomore slump and not who he actually is.

We tend to blame the teams role players on us not being good, but our "best" players may just not be good enough to elevate them.

The best we've played semi-recently was just after the trade deadline last season when the new guys came in. But that only lasted a short while before things went back down in the dumps. And this season, those guys are either gone, injured, or playing awful. And we haven't won a game since November.

[SWedd523]

Am I supposed to be surprised that PJ looks okay averaging 12/7 as the 4th option behind Luka, Kyrie, and Klay?

And Oubre has looked okay averaging 13/6 as a 5th option behind Embiid, Maxey, and George?

Guess I'm gonna go cry myself to sleep at that loss

[KingCat]

Am I supposed to be surprised that PJ looks okay averaging 12/7 as the 4th option behind Luka, Kyrie, and Klay?

And Oubre has looked okay averaging 13/6 as a 5th option behind Embiid, Maxey, and George?

Guess I'm gonna go cry myself to sleep at that loss

Eh I feel like role player like PJ and Kelly have little motivation to legitimately contribute to a bad small market team like us. It's the same reason why guys like Josh Green look significantly worse.

On a teams like ours you are not gonna make the playoffs and individually you are not good enough to get those sweet allstar/all NBA bonuses, so might as well coast out there and get a paycheck.

[JMAC3]

Am I supposed to be surprised that PJ looks okay averaging 12/7 as the 4th option behind Luka, Kyrie, and Klay?

And Oubre has looked okay averaging 13/6 as a 5th option behind Embiid, Maxey, and George?

Guess I'm gonna go cry myself to sleep at that loss

I mean both guys are starting, we are one of the least talented teams in the league top to bottom. Are we winning the title if we still had those guys? No. But both are better than what we are throwing on the floor currently.

Oubre his last year in Charlotte was better than league average according to EPM.
69% Off epm, 45% Def epm, and 65% Overall EPM that year.
That would be tied with Mark for the 3rd best EPM on the team this year.
At the time this board would have told you he was a bottom 10 player in the league and a massively losing player.

but my main point is not that keeping those guys was necessarily the right move, but adding talent over removing talent is the best way to improve and add more wins. Trading Nick and Martin for meaningless 2nd round picks and then expecting us to wake up the next morning to a better product on the floor isn't happening. Eventually Hornets are going to acquire talent instead of shipping it out for drafts picks that are doing nothing for us at the moment.

[Liver_Pooty]

Am I supposed to be surprised that PJ looks okay averaging 12/7 as the 4th option behind Luka, Kyrie, and Klay?

And Oubre has looked okay averaging 13/6 as a 5th option behind Embiid, Maxey, and George?

Guess I'm gonna go cry myself to sleep at that loss

Eh I feel like role player like PJ and Kelly have little motivation to legitimately contribute to a bad small market team like us. It's the same reason why guys like Josh Green look significantly worse.

On a teams like ours you are not gonna make the playoffs and individually you are not good enough to get those sweet allstar/all NBA bonuses, so might as well coast out there and get a paycheck.

Josh Green doesn’t coast. I’ll give him that. If anything he needs to shoot way more.

[MasterIchiro]

Am I supposed to be surprised that PJ looks okay averaging 12/7 as the 4th option behind Luka, Kyrie, and Klay?

And Oubre has looked okay averaging 13/6 as a 5th option behind Embiid, Maxey, and George?

Guess I'm gonna go cry myself to sleep at that loss

Eh I feel like role player like PJ and Kelly have little motivation to legitimately contribute to a bad small market team like us. It's the same reason why guys like Josh Green look significantly worse.

On a teams like ours you are not gonna make the playoffs and individually you are not good enough to get those sweet allstar/all NBA bonuses, so might as well coast out there and get a paycheck.

Josh Green doesn’t coast. I’ll give him that. If anything he needs to shoot way more.

Different thread, but the problem is Josh Green can't create his own shot. So you are asking the coach to give him the ball over the other scoring options among the other starters (LaMelo, Miller, Miles, Mark). Hell no.

[Rich4114]

Josh Green can't create his own shot and unless it's a corner three, can't convert on a shot someone else created for him. He's not a plus player at all, he's also not good defensively as advertised.

As for the addition by subtraction, it's not quite as black and white as that. You remove a Hornets rotational player and add second round picks then it is usually going to be a negative. But in the case of Nick Richards, we play horrible when he's on the floor for the most part just like when Micic is on the floor. There are the occasional "good" games from each but they come like once per month if that.

This is all about the future state of the Hornets i.e. beyond this season. If any of these players beyond our best 3-4 are still on the roster this time next year, then we're talking about tanking for Boozer and I'm assuming trading LaMelo.

The fact of the matter is other teams have players who can contribute and play important roles towards winning around their stars. You have the perfect storm here of our "stars" being 21-23 year olds who don't know how to win **** yet because they're really still developing and you have barely NBA quality players getting significant minutes around them.

If you watched the Pistons/Blazers game last night you'd see Cade (who many would argue is an all star this year, justifiably) took a back seat to Tim Hardaway Jr. Malik Beasley and Duren in the clutch and that is without Ivey. Does anyone see Cody Martin, Josh Green and Vasa Micic carrying us in the clutch while LaMelo takes a back seat and only takes 2 shots in the last 5 mins? I get that's just one example, but this happens on a nightly basis across the NBA and I can't fathom it happening more than once per 1.5 months with this roster when you have a random good Micic game and then someone like Daquan Jefferies has his career highs.

Nick Richards just needs to go. He's 27 years old and not going to get better than he is right now. He's a big body, but he plays with low basketball IQ which is something this team needs to get rid of. That was the argument to getting rid of Kelly who really was only bad because he was put into a prominent role instead of a scorer off the bench role. Nick might be alright on a team where he plays 10 mins a night and has +IQ players up and down the roster.

[JMAC3]

Josh Green can't create his own shot and unless it's a corner three, can't convert on a shot someone else created for him. He's not a plus player at all, he's also not good defensively as advertised.

As for the addition by subtraction, it's not quite as black and white as that. You remove a Hornets rotational player and add second round picks then it is usually going to be a negative. But in the case of Nick Richards, we play horrible when he's on the floor for the most part just like when Micic is on the floor. There are the occasional "good" games from each but they come like once per month if that.

This is all about the future state of the Hornets i.e. beyond this season. If any of these players beyond our best 3-4 are still on the roster this time next year, then we're talking about tanking for Boozer and I'm assuming trading LaMelo.

The fact of the matter is other teams have players who can contribute and play important roles towards winning around their stars. You have the perfect storm here of our "stars" being 21-23 year olds who don't know how to win **** yet because they're really still developing and you have barely NBA quality players getting significant minutes around them.

If you watched the Pistons/Blazers game last night you'd see Cade (who many would argue is an all star this year, justifiably) took a back seat to Tim Hardaway Jr. Malik Beasley and Duren in the clutch and that is without Ivey. Does anyone see Cody Martin, Josh Green and Vasa Micic carrying us in the clutch while LaMelo takes a back seat and only takes 2 shots in the last 5 mins? I get that's just one example, but this happens on a nightly basis across the NBA and I can't fathom it happening more than once per 1.5 months with this roster when you have a random good Micic game and then someone like Daquan Jefferies has his career highs.

Nick Richards just needs to go. He's 27 years old and not going to get better than he is right now. He's a big body, but he plays with low basketball IQ which is something this team needs to get rid of. That was the argument to getting rid of Kelly who really was only bad because he was put into a prominent role instead of a scorer off the bench role. Nick might be alright on a team where he plays 10 mins a night and has +IQ players up and down the roster.

Yes, Nick Richards is a cancer and once we get rid of him we can get some winning players into this program lol. I list examples of us doing this in the past, which is then is pointed out Richards is completely different situation and this time getting rid of him will actually help us in the long run unlike what we did with Rozier, Oubre and PJ. It is the same story every year, pick someone on the team to hate and then get tunnel vision on that player....

Anyways, the Pistons are actually a great example of what I have been preaching. They did the reverse of what most bad teams would do last year, they added talent at trade deadline and traded a high 2nd rounder for Simone Fontechio. Then this summer they added Tobias Harris, Malik Beasley and Tim Hardaway Jr. So they added 4 guys to their rotation and improved the talent level. None of those guys are very good but it is just about adding talent and trying to put a real NBA roster together.

So yeah Nick Richards, Terry Rozier, Kelly Oubre, Cody Martin, PJ Washington.. none of them are great players. They are probably Fontechio, Harris, Beasley, THJ levels of talents... and Detroit is proving you don't need a roster of 22 yr old superstars to win in the NBA. Cade is a fine player, but nobody outside of him on Detroit is some world beater that eclipses the talent of the Hornets roster. It is about stacking depth/talent.. which is why I am opposed to just continually shipping guys out for future picks with the promise of someday we will use those picks, but not until we are already a playoff team and looking to push ourselves over the top.

So again picks are fine but lets say we trade Martin and Richards for 3 combined 2nds. That would put the list of guys we sent out at Richards, Terry, Kelly, Cody, PJ so 5 guys removed because they don't impact winning and replaced them with the following healthy players available to play every night at Seth Curry. That is the only healthy player we would have to show for those trades and we wonder why we have 7 wins.

[JMAC3]

Hornets solution to getting better... suffer injuries, have no depth and lose a lot of games. Trade away even more of your talent and depth, don't replace them... suffer injuries, have worse depth, lose even more games.

but hey it makes no sense to add talent via trade because we are too bad. We need to trade away any additional talent that isn't our 3 best players and that will be addition by subtraction. Those guys don't matter, we don't need any depth. Just picks and 22 yr olds. They will take us to the promise land and then once we are winning and above .500 we will trade for good players.

That logic makes no sense, especially when you have a guy leading the league in Allstar votes and another guy who most years would have won ROY.

[Rich4114]

Hornets solution to getting better... suffer injuries, have no depth and lose a lot of games. Trade away even more of your talent and depth, don't replace them... suffer injuries, have worse depth, lose even more games.

but hey it makes no sense to add talent via trade because we are too bad. We need to trade away any additional talent that isn't our 3 best players and that will be addition by subtraction. Those guys don't matter, we don't need any depth. Just picks and 22 yr olds. They will take us to the promise land and then once we are winning and above .500 we will trade for good players.

That logic makes no sense, especially when you have a guy leading the league in Allstar votes and another guy who most years would have won ROY.

Why do you think just because we want inefficient, net negative players off the roster that we don't want to replace them? I think they would've been replaced by now if this wasn't a totally new regime coming in declaring this season as one of evaluation and development.

It's time for a refreshing of the roster. I think most would agree the young core we're building around long term is going to be LaMelo/Miller/Mark and everything else around that is fluid. Your argument is to keep guys like Nick Richards around to maintain some kind of talent level even though that talent level is a bad fit and has no impact on if we win games or not? We're 7-27, what do we lose if we move off of Nick now for something instead of just not resigning him this summer? In the spirit of evaluation, I think it's time to see what a C rotation of Mark + Diabate offers since we know what heavy Nick mins offer. Then if you haven't added anything to replace that spot via trade this season you address it in the summer.

Holding onto limited talent, doubling down and resigning them is how we got stuck on the treadmill. It sucks losing all these games right now, but the future is actually more bright than say the 2017 or 2018 Hornets where NOBODY would take our contracts unless we attached draft picks to them.

Using your Pistons example, that is what we should be looking to do this summer. Pistons didn't stick with Isiah Livers, Bogdonavich and Killian Hayes because "some talent is better than no talent". They moved off of them and put actual rotational NBA players on their roster. I am in favor of not doubling down on our versions of Hayes, Livers and Bogdonavich. If we go into 2025-26 with Nick, Cody, Micic, Wong, Jefferies, Green all getting significant mins then I'd expect another bottom 10 season.

[MasterIchiro]

Guys guys guys, you got it all wrong. We should keep Nick Richards because somebody sucks worse, and that somebody is definitely his replacement.

I just know it!

[HornetJail]

i stand by my opinion that we could sign JaVale McGee today, ask him to play backup minutes tonight without hardly a look at the game plan, and he'd roughly perform as well as Richards. If anyone offers anything of note for Richards, I would take it.

[JMAC3]

Hornets solution to getting better... suffer injuries, have no depth and lose a lot of games. Trade away even more of your talent and depth, don't replace them... suffer injuries, have worse depth, lose even more games.

but hey it makes no sense to add talent via trade because we are too bad. We need to trade away any additional talent that isn't our 3 best players and that will be addition by subtraction. Those guys don't matter, we don't need any depth. Just picks and 22 yr olds. They will take us to the promise land and then once we are winning and above .500 we will trade for good players.

That logic makes no sense, especially when you have a guy leading the league in Allstar votes and another guy who most years would have won ROY.

Why do you think just because we want inefficient, net negative players off the roster that we don't want to replace them? I think they would've been replaced by now if this wasn't a totally new regime coming in declaring this season as one of evaluation and development.

It's time for a refreshing of the roster. I think most would agree the young core we're building around long term is going to be LaMelo/Miller/Mark and everything else around that is fluid. Your argument is to keep guys like Nick Richards around to maintain some kind of talent level even though that talent level is a bad fit and has no impact on if we win games or not? We're 7-27, what do we lose if we move off of Nick now for something instead of just not resigning him this summer? In the spirit of evaluation, I think it's time to see what a C rotation of Mark + Diabate offers since we know what heavy Nick mins offer. Then if you haven't added anything to replace that spot via trade this season you address it in the summer.

Holding onto limited talent, doubling down and resigning them is how we got stuck on the treadmill. It sucks losing all these games right now, but the future is actually more bright than say the 2017 or 2018 Hornets where NOBODY would take our contracts unless we attached draft picks to them.

Using your Pistons example, that is what we should be looking to do this summer. Pistons didn't stick with Isiah Livers, Bogdonavich and Killian Hayes because "some talent is better than no talent". They moved off of them and put actual rotational NBA players on their roster. I am in favor of not doubling down on our versions of Hayes, Livers and Bogdonavich. If we go into 2025-26 with Nick, Cody, Micic, Wong, Jefferies, Green all getting significant mins then I'd expect another bottom 10 season.

Of course, just replace the talent like we did Rozier- where we have zero players added to take his place. PJ Washington has turned into Seth Curry on the roster. Kelly Oubre was just let walk because we couldn't have used anyone anyone at all to play and score 15 ppg the last two years while we are the worst offense in league-zero players replaced him, but hey at least we saved 10 million bucks.

but yes of course if we trade Nick and Cody there are better players just hanging around we can snatch up, that is why guys like Jeffries, Wong, Seth and KJ are all just sooo good...

but this time will be different, we will go and find even better players when we replace them.

[HornetJail]

Of course, just replace the talent like we did Rozier- where we have zero players added to take his place. PJ Washington has turned into Seth Curry on the roster. Kelly Oubre was just let walk because we couldn't have used anyone anyone at all to play and score 15 ppg the last two years while we are the worst offense in league-zero players replaced him, but hey at least we saved 10 million bucks.

but yes of course if we trade Nick and Cody there are better players just hanging around we can snatch up, that is why guys like Jeffries, Wong, Seth and KJ are all just sooo good...

but this time will be different, we will go and find even better players when we replace them.

we got 1st rounders to downgrade each of Rozier and PJ... and i'll be honest Rozier isn't missed much when Mann is healthy. I'd argue Grant Williams largely played as well as PJ did his last season here. It's just unfortunate both are hurt.

You mention Jeffries/Wong/Seth/Simpson as the problem players, and Nick Richards is right there with them. He's part of the problem, and the drop-off we'd see after moving him is effectively zero. He's far closer to that caliber than he is to PJ, Rozier, or even Oubre.

[JMAC3]

Of course, just replace the talent like we did Rozier- where we have zero players added to take his place. PJ Washington has turned into Seth Curry on the roster. Kelly Oubre was just let walk because we couldn't have used anyone anyone at all to play and score 15 ppg the last two years while we are the worst offense in league-zero players replaced him, but hey at least we saved 10 million bucks.

but yes of course if we trade Nick and Cody there are better players just hanging around we can snatch up, that is why guys like Jeffries, Wong, Seth and KJ are all just sooo good...

but this time will be different, we will go and find even better players when we replace them.

we got 1st rounders to downgrade each of Rozier and PJ... and i'll be honest Rozier isn't missed much when Mann is healthy. I'd argue Grant Williams largely played as well as PJ did his last season here. It's just unfortunate both are hurt.

You mention Jeffries/Wong/Seth/Simpson as the problem players, and Nick Richards is right there with them. He's part of the problem, and the drop-off we'd see after moving him is effectively zero. He's far closer to that caliber than he is to PJ, Rozier, or even Oubre.

Great those first round picks are useless to actually winning games until we use them to add better players. We haven't.

I am just talking about actually winning, putting a talented roster together. Not some hypothetical future like the Jazz are living in when you have a billion future firsts but the product on the court sucks, you aren't competitive and because of that you aren't developing good habits for the players you do have.

Honestly at this point I would rather see the Hornets trade all 6 first round picks that trade eligible and compete for the 7 seed then watching us flounder around preaching good habits for the 3rd year in a row.

[yosemiteben]

Honestly at this point I would rather see the Hornets trade all 6 first round picks that trade eligible and compete for the 7 seed then watching us flounder around preaching good habits for the 3rd year in a row.

Ummm...that seems like a real outlier take to me.

[amcoolio]

Of course, just replace the talent like we did Rozier- where we have zero players added to take his place. PJ Washington has turned into Seth Curry on the roster. Kelly Oubre was just let walk because we couldn't have used anyone anyone at all to play and score 15 ppg the last two years while we are the worst offense in league-zero players replaced him, but hey at least we saved 10 million bucks.

but yes of course if we trade Nick and Cody there are better players just hanging around we can snatch up, that is why guys like Jeffries, Wong, Seth and KJ are all just sooo good...

but this time will be different, we will go and find even better players when we replace them.

we got 1st rounders to downgrade each of Rozier and PJ... and i'll be honest Rozier isn't missed much when Mann is healthy. I'd argue Grant Williams largely played as well as PJ did his last season here. It's just unfortunate both are hurt.

You mention Jeffries/Wong/Seth/Simpson as the problem players, and Nick Richards is right there with them. He's part of the problem, and the drop-off we'd see after moving him is effectively zero. He's far closer to that caliber than he is to PJ, Rozier, or even Oubre.

Great those first round picks are useless to actually winning games until we use them to add better players. We haven't.

I am just talking about actually winning, putting a talented roster together. Not some hypothetical future like the Jazz are living in when you have a billion future firsts but the product on the court sucks, you aren't competitive and because of that you aren't developing good habits for the players you do have.

Honestly at this point I would rather see the Hornets trade all 6 first round picks that trade eligible and compete for the 7 seed then watching us flounder around preaching good habits for the 3rd year in a row.

I'm glad you have joined the dark side and are finally starting to get frustrated with this **** organization

Only yosimiteben left to convince