National Basketball Association

Charlotte Hornets: Can Kemba, Batum Lead Buzz City Back To The Playoffs?

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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Building off of last year’s success, can Kemba Walker and Nicolas Batum lead the Charlotte Hornets back to the NBA playoffs?

With the losses of Jeremy Lin, Al Jefferson and Courtney Lee, the Charlotte Hornets will have to replace a handful of key pieces from last season’s playoff team. Although they did recover with some nice additions in Ramon Sessions, Roy Hibbert and Marco Belinelli, the team still lost a lot of key contributors.

Jeremy Lin ran the second unit, and also played alongside Kemba Walker some, but Ramon Sessions isn’t the shooter/scorer Lin is. So Steve Clifford is going to be playing Belinelli and Batum and the two more, while Sessions sticks to strictly running the second unit.

Roy Hibbert was also brought in to help resurrect his career with the Charlotte Hornets, but that’s a gamble the team doesn’t need to be taking. I know that Clifford helped turn Al Jefferson’s career around, but that isn’t going to happen with Hibbert. While Jefferson was an offensive stud that needed help on the less glamorous end of the floor, Hibbert needs help everywhere.

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He isn’t a great rebounder (averaged 4.9 a game) and he’s to slow to guard players out on the perimeter. That’s why Byron Scott had so much trouble playing him (averaged 23.2 minutes a night,) and his offensive efficiency wasn’t helpful either (shot 44.3 percent from the field.)

So, if the team plans on making the postseason this year they’re going to need Nicolas Batum and Kemba Walker to take the next step up in their careers.

Now that isn’t to say they aren’t both talented as is, but with the lack of depth and talent on the roster they’re both going to need to take another step in their growth as players.

In Walker’s case, it’s stepping it up on the defensive end of the floor, while Nicolas Batum can improve his shot selection and efficiency (shot 42.6 percent during the regular season, and a dreadful 37.8 percent during the playoffs.)

Kemba isn’t a bad defender, but he could improve on that end. The Hornets’ defensive rating was 102.2 when he played, and 100.8 when he sat. Now that isn’t too bad, but it supports the common narrative that he isn’t a great defender.

His defensive real plus-minus of -0.35 shows that, as Deron Williams, Goran Dragic and Jeremy Lin where all higher. In isolation situations, he wasn’t any better as finished he the season sitting in the 43.9 percentile (below the league average.)

However, he did fair well in defending spot-up shooter as he sits in the 62.5 percentile. And in defending the pick-and-roll ball-handler he allowed only 0.80 points per possession, placing him in the 55.2 percentile (average.)

With Nicolas Batum, the Charlotte Hornets have a human Swiss army knife. Whether it’s defending, playmaking, rebounding or scoring Batum can essentially do it all. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his own fair share of weaknesses either.

Last season 45.7 percent of his shots came from behind the arc, while only 15.1 percent of his shots came at the basket. Now that’s fine if you’re Stephen Curry, but Nicolas Batum is not that, as he only hit 34.8 percent on his three-ball attempts.

Which isn’t bad, but when that’s one of the main shots in your offensive arsenal you need to shoot a higher percentage. At times it would even come back to hurt him, because he would have trouble finding a rhythm when his three-pointers weren’t falling.

That was well evident during his 9-point stinker against the Denver Nuggets, in which he shot 2-8 from the field (2-7 from three) in 38 minutes of action. And again during the playoffs when he went 0-4 from behind the arc and 3-11 from the field.

That’s unacceptable if you’re going to be the teams first or second option. Role players can afford to have an off day, but the stars on your team need to make plays every game, that’s what makes them stars.

Kemba Walker and Nicolas Batum are both terrific players in their own right. But that doesn’t mean they can’t get better, because that’s what the teams’ going to need from them.

The Charlotte Hornets have some nice complementary players in Marvin Williams, Cody Zeller and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, but the teams only going to go as far as their stars can take them. So Nicolas Batum and Kemba Walker are going to have to step it up a notch in order to get this team into April’s festivities.

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