The Charlotte Hornets introduced new head of basketball operations Jeff Peterson yesterday, and he made the media rounds as part of that introduction.
Majority owners Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin kicked off the press conference by explaining how excited they are to have Peterson on board and what led to his hiring. Plotkin revealed that the team, and the owners in particular, underwent an extensive interview process with a lot of candidates that included things like roster conversations and went as far as personality and leadership tests. All three reiterated how aligned they are in terms of core values and goals for the Hornets franchise.
The first question regarding the roster generated a couple of interesting quotes from Peterson. First, he referred to upcoming free agent Miles Bridges as part of the young core. Second, he actually knew about the roster and what situation it’s in, which was a little different that Mitch Kupchak’s opening press conference where, if I remember correctly, he dodged a lot of questions about the roster as if he didn’t know a whole lot about it yet. And on the Mitch Kupchak topic, both Peterson and the owners made comments that somewhat corroborated the reports that ownership led the trade deadline decisions. Peterson referred to the savvy moves that ownership made, while Schnall started the press conference thanking Mitch for working closely with them as they got through the trade deadline and talked about ownership’s goals at the deadline.
Peterson definitely has a commanding presence when he speaks. He’s very confident and well spoken. He’s hard not to hear him speak and believe that he knows what he’s doing. He didn’t lay out any sort of specific plan, but he did share his excitement with the roster and the different groups of players they had, from the young core to the new veterans that have made this an exciting group to build around. In his one on one with Matt Rochinski, he talked about the contrasting team building styles he worked around between the Hawks and the Nets. He was a part of the Hawks organization when they won 60 games with no clear superstar and a part of the Nets organization when they tried to build the whole team out of superstars. He did allude to one of those methods being a dead end. I think we know which one that is, and that’s probably the biggest hint that he dropped about his visions for building a team.
These introductory press conferences are never going to provide any super valuable nuggets about the organizational direction or roster building plans. They’re just a chance to get to meet the new people and maybe get an idea of how they approach their job. It was definitely a positive press conference. Peterson and the new owners seem very optimistic and very eager to build something successful here. If they can catch a few breaks, they seem like they have the mentality to make it happen.
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