Charlotte early offseason in review (HW/bondom34/dbrandon/MotorKeepsGoing)

[fatlever]

Correct depth chart is the one MotorKeepsGoing posted

PG: Kemba Walker, Ramon Sessions, Brian Roberts
SG: Nicolas Batum, Marco Belinelli, Aaron Harrison (unguaranteed)
SF: Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Jeremy Lamb
PF: Marvin Williams, Frank Kaminsky, Christian Wood
C: Cody Zeller, Roy Hibbert, Spencer Hawes, Mike Tobey (camp deal)

[bondom34]

Correct depth chart is the one MotorKeepsGoing posted

PG: Kemba Walker, Ramon Sessions, Brian Roberts
SG: Nicolas Batum, Marco Belinelli, Aaron Harrison (unguaranteed)
SF: Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Jeremy Lamb
PF: Marvin Williams, Frank Kaminsky, Christian Wood
C: Cody Zeller, Roy Hibbert, Spencer Hawes, Mike Tobey (camp deal)

Yes, I was semi-close!

[RexRyan]

Can they win more games next year with any of these moves? The retention of Batum and Williams makes sense, but I'm not exactly sure they improved. C

[amcoolio]

MKG is better than anything Detroit or Indiana added. But, he has to stay healthy.

MKG stays healthy (and the team is relatively healthy), they win 50 games.

MKG misses most of the season, 35-40.

[chellis]

MKG is better than anything Detroit or Indiana added. But, he has to stay healthy.

MKG stays healthy (and the team is relatively healthy), they win 50 games.

MKG misses most of the season, 35-40.

I feel most Hornets fans on this board are way too optimistic when it comes to MKG. Is MKG a good player? Yes. But it seems most posters thinks he'll stay healthy. Yes, the injury that happened to him last year was a bit of a fluke, but the way he plays lends itself to injuries. I like MKG as a player, but I feel the fans are putting way more value on him than their should be. Hopefully he proves me wrong and everyone else right, but I just don't see him staying consistently healthy year in and year out.

[gom]

I rated it an A, even with the Belinelli trade. I thought it was that good.

Keeping Batum & Williams to build a solid future was an excellent move. Losing Lin sucked, but they weren't going to pay him like the Nets, so the writing was on the wall. Losing their draft pick was bad, but a mid-20s pick is an iffy asset anyhow. If the Hornets see themselves as an "almost contender", a player like Marco helps them more.

They are a lock for the postseason and if it comes together, they will be better than the Raptors this year. Along with the Cavs, Raptors, Celtics, and Hawks, the Hornets have a great chance to fight for the East.

[Patsfan1081]

MKG is better than anything Detroit or Indiana added. But, he has to stay healthy.

MKG stays healthy (and the team is relatively healthy), they win 50 games.

MKG misses most of the season, 35-40.

I feel most Hornets fans on this board are way too optimistic when it comes to MKG. Is MKG a good player? Yes. But it seems most posters thinks he'll stay healthy. Yes, the injury that happened to him last year was a bit of a fluke, but the way he plays lends itself to injuries. I like MKG as a player, but I feel the fans are putting way more value on him than their should be. Hopefully he proves me wrong and everyone else right, but I just don't see him staying consistently healthy year in and year out.

I'm not sure, Teague is a decent upgrade from Hill, Indiana also added Young also, both who havent shown the injury broblems Batum and MKG have. MKG is a nice young player but at the moment he's still a defensive specialist until he proves otherwise. I'm still not a fan of the Frank pick, yeah he added muscle, I'm skeptical that will effect his inside game at all. Then again I mAy be tainted by getting my hopes up after Olynyk put on muscle last offseason. I think Charlotte finishes around the same spot they did last season. Like Boston they have a lot of nice pieces but are lacking star players, Batum does have a good shot at making the all star team this year. I grade them at a C, they,should have done a better job than Marco replacing Lee's shooting.

[yosemiteben]

Some random thoughts from a Hornets fan:

Lots of people talk like the Hornets are trying to replace CLee's performance last season with Belinelli's. This is wrong for two reasons. First, we traded for Lee at the ASB, so he only played 28 regular season games in Charlotte. Even if we downgrade some at his position, having a replacement for a larger portion of the season will be helpful. Second, CLee was essentially an MKG placeholder - he was a starter that was only acquired after MKG went down and who we were ok walking because we know we have MKG coming back. Maybe MKG has injury issues, but it's obvious that MKG, not Belinelli, is our Lee replacement in the starting lineup.

Lin was not a good fit next to Kemba and Nic offensively. Lin was a decent combo guard defensively - he did a good job understanding our system quickly, stayed within the system and played nice fundamental defense. At times he was over matched physically, but he generally was fine defensively. The problem was he was a terrible spot up shooter last season and thus was no where close to an ideal fit next to Batum and Kemba.

This season we will have the luxury of picking our weapon between Belinelli and MKG when we are closing out games. If we want to focus on scoring, Belinelli is a much, much, much better fit next to Kemba and Batum than Lin was. He is better off the ball and a much better C&S guy. If we are more focused on getting stops, we can plug in MKG, who is an exponentially better wing defender than Lin. We have significantly better offensive and defensive options in our closing group this season than we had for the majority of last season.

We also still have a number of guys that should continue to improve organically - Zeller (turns 24 in October), Frank (23), Lamb (24), and MKG (turns 23 in September) all have untapped upside (jury may be out on Lamb for that) and their development in and of itself should increase the ceiling of this team.

With all that said, it is impossible IMO to overstate how important it is to this team given the roster decisions that were made this summer that MKG stay healthy.

[watpho71]

Charlotte had a successful season last year and did a good job of maintaining. They lose Lin, Lee and Jefferson, but they don't lose much bringing in Sessions, Belinelli and Hibbert. MKG looked good during his brief run last season and should be hungry for court time. Kaminsky should be improved and bringing solid contributions to the second unit. And I like the under the radar low risk high reward signing of Christian Wood. They are definitely back in the playoffs - health permitting - looking like a 5 or 6 seed.