Charlotte Hornets’ In-Season Tournament schedule revealed
The schedule for the NBA’s new In-Season Tournament has been revealed. Part of East Group B, the Charlotte Hornets will be one of four Eastern Conference teams to advance past the group stage. The teams that advance will be the winner of each group (six teams) and two wild cards (teams with the best record who did not win their respective group).
Making up the rest of East Group B are the Milwaukee Bucks, New York Knicks, Miami Heat, and Washington Wizards. Each team has two home games and two away games during the four-game group play period. The first stage of the tournament begins on November 3rd, with games being played on Tuesdays and Fridays throughout the month. Charlotte is one of a handful of teams who will not begin on the 3rd of November, but rather the 10th. This is due to the odd number of teams per group and the Hornets happen to be the odd team out with the other four teams scheduled to tip off on the opening night of the tournament.
First off, this is a pretty tough group for the Hornets. Three of the four teams they are scheduled to face were playoff teams last season, including the NBA Finals representative from the Eastern Conference, Miami Heat. Charlotte did not have a ton of success when facing their groupmates, going a combined 5-9 in those matchups. A season split with Miami is the standout while avoiding sweeps at the hands of the Bucks and Knicks is at least encouraging.
On one hand, it appears advancing could be a difficult task. On the other, with loftier goals in mind, they may focus on the regular season and traditional playoffs rather than the new In-Season Tournament and opt to have non-regulars see heavy minutes, giving a team like Charlotte a chance to advance.
Ntilikina is entering his seventh season in the NBA. He started with the Knicks after being selected eighth overall in the 2017 NBA Draft. He never lived up to his lofty perceived potential and saw his minutes per game decrease each of his four seasons in Ne wYork, bottoming out at just 9.8 minutes per game across 33 appearances in year four. He spent the last two seasons with the Mavericks as a depth guard piece, but never consistently cracked the regular rotation.
He will fill the Hornets need of a backup ball handling guard behind LaMelo Ball and Terry Rozier. He’s very much in the same mold as last year’s one year backup point guard Dennis Smith Jr. He’s a plus defender but isn’t an efficient scorer. He’s kind of just a body on offense.
With that, the Hornets have finally done something! It’s curious that they couldn’t just bring back Dennis Smith Jr. if they’re just going to spend minimum-level money on a backup guard. Maybe they had bigger plans that never came to fruition. Regardless, not a great look to let last season’s successful backup point guard walk for a minimum-level contract only to sign a worse version of him a month later. Such is the Hornets for the last two summers I guess.
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