Another deflating Charlotte Hornets season has came and went. Though to be fair, it concluded on a much more positive note than years past thanks to the sea change in the front office since Jeff Peterson took over. Rather than hoping that key players would just stay healthy (falsely, in hindsight), this summer Hornets fans can look forward to a new front office strategy, a new head coach, and in all likelihood, a new cast of players on the roster.
Part of that “new cast of players” will inevitably be a high pick in 2024 (unless the pick is traded, but that’s for another time), because lost seasons do breed at least one positive result; a high lottery pick in the NBA Draft. The Hornets got lucky and jumped up from fourth to second in the 2023 lottery and drafted Brandon Miller, who firmly established himself as a building block after the pick was universally panned by the entire NBA sphere. Currently, Charlotte is tied with Portland for the third-best lottery odds in 2024 after each team finished the season at 21-61. A coin-flip will break the tie and determine which team gets a 14% chance at No. 1 with the third-best odds, and which team’s odds at the top pick plummet all the way down to 12.5%. Really, the important thing about having the third-best odds is that the farthest a team can fall is to the seventh pick. That floor drops to the eighth pick with the fourth-best odds, and so on.
If the Hornets can get lucky for the third time in five drafts and not only claim the third spot in the lottery odds, but jump into the top-two, they might have a chance at selecting one of the higher-regarded players in a draft class perceived as the weakest in a number of years. There are a host of prospects that have a claim to the “consensus” top-three; Alexandre Sarr, Nikola Topić, Zaccharie Risacher, Matas Buzelis and Ron Holland II all come from outside the traditional NCAA route, but Rob Dillingham, teammates Donovan Clingan and Stephon Castle, Cody Williams, and Isaiah Collier all made their way to the top of the class by way of college hoops. The issue is that if these prospects were in another class, few, if any of them would be drafted as highly as they will be in June.
That’s not to say they lack upside; Sarr, Topić, and Williams in particular strike me as prospects with lots of room to improve upon the skillset they already possess. Thankfully for Charlotte, they’ll be in range to land a player with a high ceiling barring some catastrophic lottery luck. Apart from landing seventh or eighth, the Hornets will have a shot to land a consensus top prospect. Even in a weak class, draft position matters — acquiring players to build with is especially important for teams like Charlotte, which already has two players to build around in LaMelo Ball and Miller.
In the first summer of the Peterson regime, we’re about to find out which player archetypes the front office value most when building around a dynamic playmaker that’s struggled with ankle injuries and a potent three-level scorer. For example, let’s say the Hornets draft fifth; picking Dillingham in that spot signals a vast difference in draft philosophy versus picking Reed Sheppard. It’s fair to surmise that the past front office believed in the athletic implications behind a player’s upside — Miles Bridges, Kai Jones, James Bouknight, JT Thor, Nick Richards, even Scottie Lewis. Drafting a player like Dillingham, Williams, Stephon Castle, or another prospect with flashes of high-level athleticism and talent but less polish in their overall game rather than an early-career contributor with a limited ceiling might indicate the newly-formed Peterson front office values those same traits. How philosophy, eye test, analytics, age, and the balance between floor and upside are weighed within a scouting department is going to be telling this year. It’ll be interesting to see how that all shakes out with an entirely new collection of decision-makers in Charlotte.
But, we’ve still got nearly two months before then. Anyone who’s been frequenting At The Hive over the past half-decade knows I’ve got special interest and focus on the NBA draft. For those who share that interest (*cracks knuckles*) it’s time to get in the mud.
It was important to set the scene of the 2024 draft first and foremost. Next, there are two prospects I want to declare from the get-go as some of “my guys” in this class — aka, those who I’m higher on than consensus, or just believe in their NBA potential more than most. Let’s start at the top with 18-year-old Serbian point guard Nikola Topić.
The 2005-born prospect started the 2023-24 season on loan to Mega Basket before returning to Crvena zvezda, both Serbian clubs in the Adriatic League. He played 13 games with Mega, averaging 18.6 points on a 56.2 eFG%, 3.7 rebounds and 6.9 assists. Though he’s only played eight games with zvezda before suffering a knee injury on January 4, there’s reportedly a chance he returns for their second Adriatic League quarterfinals game on April 22. NBA scouts may not have gotten their last look at Topić in live action after all.
What makes Topić so appealing to me as a prospect is mainly the combination of pull-up shooting flashes, creative and quick decision-making, and point-of-attack defense. The anthropometrics stand out as well — of the youngest players in the draft, he measured in at 6-foot-6 without shoes and a 7-foot wingspan at Basketball Without Borders in November 2023. That size and length, couple with ample NBA athleticism despite an immature frame, gives him the versatility to defend either backcourt spot. Perhaps most impressively, he does not give a rat’s ass that he’s a teenager in a grown man’s league — he’s got a chip on his shoulder and plays with a high motor on both ends of the floor, covering ground in an instant to recover defensively, and using his length and quickness to blow by defenders on offense.
Offensively, the shot needs to come around in a big way for him to be an off-ball threat, but there were real flashes shooting off the dribble and as a downhill playmaker with court vision that frequently makes difficult reads and passes. If he becomes a league-average shooter in the NBA — something around 36% — he’s going to be quite reminiscent of Marcus Smart, in my opinion. A Smart-level ceiling is worth a top-three pick in this class without question.
The next prospect is a bit further down the board, and may be out of Charlotte’s draft range entirely barring a trade. But it’s worth mentioning here anyways; I’m probably going to be much higher than consensus on Devin Carter when it’s all said and done.
How can not be high on a tenacious guard defensive versatility that induces pure havoc on-ball, efficiently generates steals+blocks and has innate rotation instincts off-ball, acrobatic finishing using strength and verticality, and shooting range out to 30 feet? Yes, the shooting can be streaky, he’s too erratic and turnover-prone as a playmaker to be a lead guard, and being 6-foot-3 might mitigate his rim protection (1 BLK per game each of the last two seasons) at the next level. But what that doesn’t account for is that Carter is a dawg that made tremendous improvements throughout his skillset since arriving at Providence. He started every game he played in as a Friar and was arguably the best player in the Big East over the last two years, winning Player of the Year this past season. The dude lives for the moment, never takes a play off, and really checks every box when it comes to intangibles.
That’ll do it for the first round of draft discussion. While the 2024 class is obviously weak, the Hornets will still have a high-value pick hopefully in the top-four, along with a mid-second-rounder to use on a Two-Way player. This draft is still pretty important, especially considering it’s the new front office’s first step towards building a sustainable competitive team. There just might be a top-60 big board on the way early next week, too. I’m officially going draft sicko mode.
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Chase Whitney
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