Charlotte had another disastrous season in 2024-25 and in order to make things even worse, their win total also dropped for the fourth consecutive season, a clear sign that the franchise is going the wrong direction. Part of this regression can be explained by injuries from their two best players as LaMelo Ball only played 47 games while Brandon Miller was only available for 27 games.
Ball’s availability has been a real problem for the franchise as he has only played 36, 22 and 47 games in the last three seasons. Possibly due to this, LaMelo has been a very inconsistent player and streaky at best on offense. Even though his offensive usage last season was insanely high with 37.1%, he only shot 49.7% eFG% while also being a very turnover prone PG. This isn’t good enough for a team’s best player.
Meanwhile, Brandon Miller enjoyed a good rookie season but he regressed last season shooting wise while carrying a bigger burden on offense. Even if both LaMelo and Miller had been able to remain healthy, it would have been impossible for Charlotte to be a decent team on offense as both players had a huge volume of shots while only shooting 40.3% and 40.5% from the field. With these numbers, no wonder the Hornets had the second worst offense in the league last season.
For this season, Charlotte drafted Kon Knueppel with the #4 overall pick. One of the team’s main problems has been their lack of perimeter shooting and Knueppel’s ability should help them in this regard. On the other hand, their lack of frontcourt depth could be a problem for them. They traded Nick Richards away mid last season and in this offseason they also traded away both Mark Williams and Jusuf Nurkic.
Curiously, the Hornets did not make a big effort to improve this position in the offseason. Moussa Diabete and Mason Plumlee are the veterans in the roster for this position and this isn’t great news for them. Charlotte’s hope might reside in that second round Ryan Kalkbrenner surprises and shows that he is a NBA level player from day one.
It also doesn’t seem like the Hornets trust LaMelo’s ability to stay healthy for a whole season as they signed two ball handlers in Colin Sexton and Spencer Dinwiddie. They should be able to help the team by filling some gaps, but I don’t think they are a good fit to play alongside LaMelo.
Charlotte seems to have more offensive talent on the perimeter this season, but efficiency could be a problem for them again. On the other hand, defensively, the lack of quality solutions at the Center position could be a major obstacle for them to be able to be even a decent unit this season.