Offseason 2025 Thread

[vexco]

gotta agree with most of that, we very easily could've made a run at the playoffs this summer with like one acquisition, but the FO just chose to set the rebuild back multiple years with that Mark trade. Not a fan.

But .... it is kind of odd to pretend the Hornets are between timelines when the headliner of the "first" timeline is just one year older than the headliner of the younger timeline.
Melo is 23 going on 24
Miller is 22, 23 soon after the start of the season
Kon is 20
are really the only players we REALLY need to care about long term.

the elder statesmen of our rotation are Sexton (26) and Miles (27) and even if they were core level pieces, I wouldn't consider them out of our timeline.

Save the "two timelines" talk for the Warriors of a couple years ago when they were trying to fit their core of Steph/Klay/Draymond with rookies 12-15 years younger than them.

I just don't see how trading Mark set anything back, honestly. Are people just looking at the stats and age and thinking he was something special?

are people pretending that 0 games of quality center play is somehow better than 40-50?

I just don't think he gave us even 10 games of quality center play. Slow and a turnstile on defense for a player who was supposed to be a "mobile" big coming out of college.

[KembaWalker]

losing Mark definitely set us back a couple years, just not when we traded him but whenever his back gave out. , however it does make our current conundrum very confusing as theyve had plenty of time and opportunity to address it assuming they knew the true extent of his health and how he was looking in rehab and the weight room. i wasnt a Clingan guy by any means but i also didnt have the inside scoop on Mark or the general immediate willingness to wheel and deal Mark and Nick that they had. Seems like we should have made those tough decisions sooner and addressed the position when we had a flyer in a terrible draft to justify a potentially solid if unspectacular center

[SWedd523]

I think we're going to get punished all year down low and all the folks saying "we're not going to miss Mark" are enjoying some delusion-oil

[fatlever]

we will probably get punished, but it wont be because mark isnt on the team. he would have been punished just as badly. mark's value was strictly on the offensive side of the ball, but even that was mostly empty.

mark wasnt the answer. we still need an answer.

[fatlever]

hornets had a def rating of 118 with mark on the floor, and an overall net rating of -12
he was bad in almost all 40-50 games. and for all his great empty stats on offense, he had a lower off rating than moose 106.9 to 106.3, while moose was much better defensively 110.

i get being worried about our center position, but mark wasnt the answer.

what about rebounding???? nope

on/off
hornets with moose grabbed 52.9% of rebounds, best of all rotation players
mark was 48.9, the worst of all rotaion player

opponents fg%? nope

on/off
moose - 46.6
mark - 48.2 (again worst on team among rotation players)

you have to dig deeeeeeep to find a single meaningful stat where the team played better with mark on the floor vs literally any other big on the roster last year.

he was legitimately abysmal. stop looking at points/rebound (almost all of which were 2nd half garbage stats). go look at his 1st quarter stats if you dont believe me. hornets were correct to balk at paying him 100 mil.

it bears repeating... this dude wasnt the answer. he looks the part. talks the part. surface stats are good. impact is minimal or negative. you wanna pay him 100 mil? and thats before we consider his sketchy (at best) health record and motor? it sucks. we all thought mark was finally the guy, until he wasnt.

[Braggins]

we will probably get punished, but it wont be because mark isnt on the team. he would have been punished just as badly. mark's value was strictly on the offensive side of the ball, but even that was mostly empty.

mark wasnt the answer. we still need an answer.

Yeah, if he was truly good at offense he would have elevated the GLeague roster he was playing with for most of last year. What are we even doing here?

Im sorry but if you won't even admit Mark's offensive value I don't think your opinion on him should be taken seriously.

[fatlever]

we will probably get punished, but it wont be because mark isnt on the team. he would have been punished just as badly. mark's value was strictly on the offensive side of the ball, but even that was mostly empty.

mark wasnt the answer. we still need an answer.

Yeah, if he was truly good at offense he would have elevated the GLeague roster he was playing with for most of last year. What are we even doing here?

Im sorry but if you won't even admit Mark's offensive value I don't think your opinion on him should be taken seriously.

and same goes for anyone that cant look past his empty stats that contributed to nothing. we were better with him off floor all year.

im not losing sleep over mark. just like i wasnt losing sleep over nick.

[fatlever]

none of this is blind support of mason or kalk. neither of them are the answer either.
moose needs to prove he wasnt an advanced stats fluke by doing it again. even then moose should be #2. grant needs to prove he is healthy.
its a mess. i dont disagree. but not at all worried about not paying mark.

plus, we have no clue what was happening behind the scenes with mark. clearly the front office lost faith. and im pretty sure mark didnt want to be here post trade.

[fatlever]

if you cant impact the game defensively as a center or space the floor on offense (via shooting or passing), then i simply dont put a ton of value in you as a center. thats just me.

[vexco]

I think we're going to get punished all year down low and all the folks saying "we're not going to miss Mark" are enjoying some delusion-oil

We were getting punished with or without Mark unless you think he was gonna be good defensively.

[Braggins]

You guys are saying the same exact things about Mark that you were about PJ right before he got traded and immediately went to the finals as a starter lol. Phoenix is a mess and I don't think there is any way that roster is going to function, so I certainly don't think that is going to happen for Mark next year, but the inability to tell when a player is phoning it in because the situation here is a dumpster fire (or whatever context) is pretty stunning.

Last year Mark was coming off a year and a half layoff from injury and played most of the season with a GLeague roster. I think the absolutist attitude that he is just some kind of worthless lazy loser and that is the full explanation for the season he had last year season is frankly embarrassing.

Like, he would have to be an idiot to be out there diving on every single loose ball and putting his body on the line every night so that maybe the Horncats could win 21 games instead of 19, rather than prioritizing health and development. Playing like that last season does make sense for someone like Diabate, who is an undrafted fringe roster guy trying to claw his way into the league. Trying to make a comparison of them without any of that nuance is useless. This year Mark would be playing for a new contract and for a team that is trying to win (presumably even if he was still on the Hornets).

I won't let him completely off the hook. Part of it was probably him just being a laid back guy who might not tend to go as hard if he isn't playing for anything, which isn't ideal, but its not some massive negative for a player. That was pretty much what was obviously going on with PJ here his last couple years and it was just as obvious he was going to be a valuable player if he was in a good situation.

[fatlever]

This has nothing to do with pj. I was always a defender of pj. I preferred to keep him over miles.

The two situations are not similar.

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[vexco]

You guys are saying the same exact things about Mark that you were about PJ right before he got traded and immediately went to the finals as a starter lol. Phoenix is a mess and I don't think there is any way that roster is going to function, so I certainly don't think that is going to happen for Mark next year, but the inability to tell when a player is phoning it in because the situation here is a dumpster fire (or whatever context) is pretty stunning.

Last year Mark was coming off a year and a half layoff from injury and played most of the season with a GLeague roster. I think the absolutist attitude that he is just some kind of worthless lazy loser and that is the full explanation for the season he had last year season is frankly embarrassing.

Like, he would have to be an idiot to be out there diving on every single loose ball and putting his body on the line every night so that maybe the Horncats could win 21 games instead of 19, rather than prioritizing health and development. Playing like that last season does make sense for someone like Diabate, who is an undrafted fringe roster guy trying to claw his way into the league. Trying to make a comparison of them without any of that nuance is useless.

I won't let him completely off the hook. Part of it was probably him just being a laid back guy who might not tend to go as hard if he isn't playing for anything, which isn't ideal, but its not some massive negative for a player. That was pretty much what was obviously going on with PJ here his last couple years and it was just as obvious he was going to be a valuable player if he was in a good situation.

Who said hes a lazy loser tho? The point is he just didnt impact the game in a positive way on either side of the ball. He was simply an awful defender and you running defense by giving him a myriad of excuses for why as opposed to holding him accountable for it is far more embarrassing imo.

PJ played like 250 games for us. I dont think Mark gets a pass for phoning it in after putting in a whole 30 games of work before he decided to be trash.

[SWedd523]

we will probably get punished, but it wont be because mark isnt on the team. he would have been punished just as badly. mark's value was strictly on the offensive side of the ball, but even that was mostly empty.

mark wasnt the answer. we still need an answer.

Yeah, if he was truly good at offense he would have elevated the GLeague roster he was playing with for most of last year. What are we even doing here?

Im sorry but if you won't even admit Mark's offensive value I don't think your opinion on him should be taken seriously.

and same goes for anyone that cant look past his empty stats that contributed to nothing. we were better with him off floor all year.

im not losing sleep over mark. just like i wasnt losing sleep over nick.

Wasn't the narrative all last year that he didn't get a summer to workout... and he was taking things slowly throughout the year... active rehab... looking better as the year goes... etc?

Was that all BS or are we completely flipping the narrative? Somebody lied somewhere.

[Braggins]

This has nothing to do with pj. I was always a defender of pj. I preferred to keep him over miles.

The two situations are not similar.

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I don't think they are the same in their entirety and pointed out some of the differences in my post. I see people making the same evaluation mistake that was made with PJ, which is trying to define him as a player based on a narrow sample without any regard for the context. Tons of people on here literally were saying PJ was lazy, soft, didn't care, didn't affect winning, terrible defender, didn't rebound, etc etc. He actually did play that way at times here, but it was when the team was going through its disaster era with all the Miles stuff and was winning 20 games a year still then. When the context was different and they actually had a functional roster around him and the team was competitive you could see what his value was.

If his back gives out in the next couple seasons or something like that you guys can make fun of me for being so bullish on him, but I'm not going to go along with acting like it makes sense to define his value as a player based on his offensive rating playing with KJ Simpson and Nick Smith Jr for the 2024 Charlotte Hornets.

[LofJ]

Mark clearly had value around the league. He was worth 2 first round picks to two different teams.

It's fine that we didn't want to pay Mark, but it's not fine that we're going to enter the season with a minimum contract player as our starter. Especially when we're sitting on a pile of picks and plenty of dead weight salary that we could trade.

[Braggins]

Marks health is a real risk and he has some real issues on defense. I'm not saying he would have been a great defender last season if the context was different. I am saying that the context and his priorities last season were partially responsible for his level of play. If he and the entire roster were fully healthy he would still need to improve his defense, but I also think its true that being healthy and playing on a competitive team would have resulted in a better defensive effort than he put up last season and I think that is pretty obvious and I don't know why people are playing dumb about it. I also don't think his performance last year necessarily proves he is destined to always be a bad defender either his entire career either. I also think its pretty obvious that his offensive impact playing with LaMelo and Miller (and now Kon) if they were all healthy would be very substantial.

[SWedd523]

Mark clearly had value around the league. He was worth 2 first round picks to two different teams.

It's fine that we didn't want to pay Mark, but it's not fine that we're going to enter the season with a minimum contract player as our starter. Especially when we're sitting on a pile of picks and plenty of dead weight salary that we could trade.

10,000% this

You can't on one hand say we want to evaluate these guys and see how the team looks and then put together a clearly lopsided roster.

They've already had to cut the best defender on the team (not exactly saying much, but still) and will have to jettison more guys because they can't/won't make a move.

It's poor roster management.

[MPM]

It's poor roster management.

Individual feelings about Mark the player aside, I'm sure most 100% agree with this. I do. Plenty of time, opportunity, and assets to shore up front court between Nick being jettisoned, Mark's first trade, Mark's second trade, and FA.

[fatlever]

It's poor roster management.

Individual feelings about Mark the player aside, I'm sure most 100% agree with this. I do. Plenty of time, opportunity, and assets to shore up front court between Nick being jettisoned, Mark's first trade, Mark's second trade, and FA.

I think most of us agree that there have been some very questionable decisions regarding roster construction this summer. I have made it known over and over again that I would have kept okogie at all costs. We all agree that the center situation right now isn't acceptable... and that's coming from one of the biggest moose fans on the planet.

So just because I don't agree that trading Mark was a bad move and just because I think he proved to be pretty useless from impacting winning doesn't mean I necessarily agree with every decision that's been made this summer.

I hope they have a plan. Right now that plan seems to be stock the roster with as many three-point Shooters as humanly possible. Lol.

I am 100% much more concerned about the health of our returning injured players. That's what's going to Define our season not the center position.

I really do think that if the core returning injured players plus the young guys look good in the first half of the Season and we are in the play in hunt that they'll pull the trigger on some of those assets to strengthen the front court.

But I also wouldn't be surprised if the front office has their eyes on the 2026 draft as the last opportunity for them to land another top 10 pick. I don't know. Kick the can.

We all want to see this team win. And we're all sick and tired of losing. We have different ideas on the best way going forward and that's understandable. I'm not sure that there was a move out there available to us this summer that would have fixed our front Court long-term. It wasn't mark.

And there's also the slim possibility that this front office just absolutely loves moose. Maybe they spent all of last year Watching moose kick Mark's ass up and down the practice court. Lol. I don't think they view him as a long-term Center but I think they like him more than they have led on over the past year and I think that's one of the reasons they were so comfortable trading Mark the first time around

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