Risks? Sure. But here’s why Hornets should embrace playing in July if NBA calls
There are risks to the Charlotte Hornets being part of the NBA season restart, and not much tangible at stake.
But the alternative — potentially going nine months without playing a regular-season game — would be worse, particularly for a young, rebuilding team.
NBA owners will meet virtually Friday to discuss alternatives for the season’s resumption, which probably wouldn’t come before late July. While the exact form of the season’s resumption might not be resolved Friday, options have been floated.
The league could just start the playoffs with 16 teams, based on the standings when the season was suspended March 11 by the COVID-19 pandemic. Or it could have all 30 teams play at least a handful of regular-season games, primarily to fulfill local television contracts.
Momentum is moving toward a middle ground — having 20, maybe 24 teams, return in a format where all participating teams would have a chance at qualifying for the playoffs. The idea would be creating incentive so that no team entering a month of preseason in July would feel it is going through the motions of meaningless games.
The Hornets are 23-42 and in 10th place in the East. They are seven games worse than the eighth-place Orlando Magic, who would be the last team in the playoffs under normal circumstances.
Backing into the playoffs would be awkward for the Hornets in a season when they pivoted hard to playing young guys in a rebuild. But the experience could be valuable, particularly if the alternative is waiting until the end of the year to again play games that count.
Conditioning unknowns
I’ve heard two arguments for why the Hornets shouldn’t want to play more games: That it could hurt their draft-lottery chances and that young players could get hurt.
The lottery-chance argument is silly. Right now, the Hornets have the eighth-worst record in the NBA. This isn’t a particularly strong draft at the top; there is no Tim Duncan- or Anthony Davis-type can’t-miss star available. If the Hornets’ odds for a top-4 pick changed slightly as a result of playing in July, that’s not shifting the course of this rebuild.
The injury risk is real. Players have been all but sequestered in their homes since March 19, when the NBA ordered team training facilities closed and urged players not to use alternative gyms.
This isn’t like past lockouts, when players were barred from NBA facilities, but found alternative weight rooms and basketball courts. For three months, players have swung around kettle bells and ridden stationary bicycles at home, trying to stay in shape. Just this week, the Hornets reopened the practice gym at Spectrum Center for voluntary individual shooting.
When they reconvene for practice, every player’s conditioning will be down and the variance from player to player could be wide. That sounds like a formula for injury. A high incidence of soft-tissue injuries when German soccer started back illustrated that risk.
If that means being conservative with minutes, particularly with top young players such as Devonte Graham and P.J. Washington, then OK. But that’s not cause to shun the idea of playing in July and August.
Progress
It’s easy to forget the Hornets were playing their best basketball just when the season was interrupted. They won four of their last eight games, including victories over playoff-bound Toronto, Houston and Miami. Their defense had dramatically improved, reflected in them holding the Eastern Conference-best Milwaukee Bucks to 93 points March 1.
“It’s frustrating that we can’t continue to see that growth and development,” Hornet coach James Borrego said in late April of the season put on hold. “If we do (restart the season), we need to hit the ground running, get back to playing that kind of basketball.”
Borrego and general manager Mitch Kupchak committed in September to playing the young guys; first- and second-year players made up nearly half the Hornets’ total minutes this season. The night they won in Miami on March 11, four rookies — Washington, Cody and Caleb Martin, and Jalen McDaniels — were in the rotation.
This team desperately needs collective experience in games with stakes: Only three rotation players — Terry Rozier, Bismack Biyombo and Cody Zeller — have real playoff experience. A World Cup-like system to qualify for the last couple of playoff spots wouldn’t quite simulate that, but it would push forward the young guys’ development.
There are risks, but isn’t that true of everything in 2020, when we’re told to wear masks and gloves to grocery shop?
If the Hornets are asked to play, they and their fans should embrace it. Waiting around until December to compete again is the last thing this young squad needs.
This story was originally published May 28, 2020 at 11:12 AM with the headline "Risks? Sure. But here’s why Hornets should embrace playing in July if NBA calls."
