Michael Jordan must be losing it right now. At least, in my personal Charlotte Hornets lore, he’s losing it. Because, in that lore, Terry Rozier was hand-picked by MJ to be the most courageous tank commander that the NBA has ever seen. Rozier was supposed to play forty MPG per game, take twenty shots per game, make 35% of them while not getting any assists, and in general just be the most unwatchable #1 option of all time. He was going to get in that tank and drive it straight to the lottery ping-pong ball ceremony. Or drive it off a cliff. And he was going to do it while MJ cheered and clapped from the sidelines.
Cue up the crying Jordan faces. Devonte’ Graham has completely upended the Hornets’ tanking plans. Except they’re still losing a bunch of games, so they’re still kinda tanking…but they’d be tanking a lot better if Rozier wasn’t getting supplanted in the lineup by this second-year dude named Devonte’ Graham who has apostrophes all over his name and can actually be a distributor as well as a scorer.
The real problem isn’t this year, though. It’s future years. What if Graham gets so good that he starts winning games by himself? He’s already almost to that point. The multi-year tanking plan that Rozier was supposed to spearhead is in jeopardy if the Hornets’ young talent develops too quickly. An eighth-seed playoff appearance next season completely derails MJ’s plans to hoard picks while what little local fan support that remains gets trampled underneath the interminable march of losses.
The only solution: trade Graham for picks, re-establish Rozier as tank commander, and try to set an NBA record for worst attendance.