Jordan ordered a last-minute vote, and a majority of the draft room favored Vonleh, sources say. When Vonleh fell, Jordan concluded the team could not pass him up. The Hornets had interest in Rodney Hood, sources say, and could have nabbed him with one of Chicago’s picks. 11 pick, where the Bulls picked McDermott. 16 and 19 for that ninth pick - the same deal Denver ultimately received in exchange for the no. The Hornets started that night hoping for Doug McDermott, Cho’s pet choice, and they rejected Chicago’s offer of nos. 9 and another team bugged the Hornets about moving up. Cho and his staff have the goods to pivot.Ĭharlotte faced almost the exact same draft-night dilemma a year earlier, when Vonleh unexpectedly fell to no. A well-prepared front office has enough intel on every first-round prospect to make snap decisions in the heat of the draft. Charlotte had 12 players on its roster before picking Kaminsky, meaning it could have drafted two players and still had room to sign either Jeremy Lin or Tyler Hansbrough - both of whom are in Charlotte on great contracts, by the way. “Even if someone wants to give me first-round picks, what am I going to do with them?”
“We didn’t have enough spots after picking up Spencer Hawes, Jeremy Lamb, and Batum,” Polk says. Polk argues drafting extra players might have cramped Charlotte’s roster space. In fantasy basketball, it sounds great: ‘Oh my god, they could have gotten all those picks.’ But in the real world, I’m not sure it makes us better.”Īdds Rich Cho, the team’s GM: “If it was such a no-brainer for us, why would another team want to do it?” 20, and we haven’t been focusing on that range. But now you have two minutes to decide if you make this trade, who you’re gonna take at no. After all the intelligence we’d done, we were comfortable with Frank. “You have two minutes to decide: ‘Do I want to do this trade?’” says Polk, one of five men atop Charlotte’s decision tree. Team higher-ups defend taking Kaminsky over any draft-day trade package - even after acquiring Spencer Hawes, another shooting big man. Boston’s offer wasn’t quite Godfather-level, but it represented a road map for a team that has cycled through an alarming number of young big men - including one, Vonleh, that it flipped for a veteran in Batum who can bolt after this season. There are two ways to escape the netherworld of a single pick in the no. Charlotte would be toast in the West, but it’s hard for the Hornets to bottom out in the East without trading away core young players - a pointless exercise. The team is too good, for now, to expect a pick toward the top of the lottery the East is so bad that teams outside the elite almost naturally gravitate toward mediocrity. “The best way for us to build is through the draft.”
Charlotte hornets roster 2000s free#
“Almost every top free agent stays with his current team,” says Curtis Polk, the team’s vice-chairman and a longtime member of Jordan’s inner circle.
And the Hornets know they cannot afford to screw up the draft. 15 is real ask Boston how it felt to squeeze into the playoffs, get demolished by a Cavs team in chill mode, and watch Justise Winslow fall right where it could have picked had it won three fewer games.īut Kaminsky is not a star, and the players Charlotte could have grabbed with those four picks will almost certainly produce more combined over their careers than Kaminsky. That’s justifiable, if you think your guy at no. Some members of Charlotte’s front office liked the Boston deal, but Michael Jordan, the team’s owner and ultimate decision-maker, preferred Kaminsky to a pile of first-rounders outside the lottery, per several sources. 15 (acquired in a prearranged contingency deal with the Hawks), one unprotected future Brooklyn pick, and a future first-rounder from either the Grizzlies or Timberwolves, per sources familiar with the talks. The Celtics offered four first-round picks for the chance to move up from no. As the drama unfolded the next night, Boston put Charlotte on the other end of a quantity-for-quality pitch. The Hornets found no takers before ultimately giving up and sending Vonleh to Portland for Nicolas Batum the day before the draft. 9 pick and Vonleh to some of the teams ahead of it - an attempt to vault into star range. In the days before the draft, Charlotte peddled that no.
Augustin, Kemba Walker, Noah Vonleh, and now Frank Kaminsky became the pivot point for two curious moves last month - one deal made, one rejected - that have rival executives questioning whether Charlotte has any plan beyond chasing the no. That’s why the draft slot that produced D.J. No team knows how hard it is to draft a star with the ninth pick better than the Charlotte Hornets.
0 kommentar(er)
