Who is the Hornets’ Most Important HINGE Player? | ESPN’s SURPRISING Win Projection REVEALED!

Who is the Hornets’ Most Important HINGE Player? | ESPN’s SURPRISING Win Projection REVEALED!

We’ll go through more win projections for the Hornets this upcoming season. And who is the Hornets hinge player? I saw John Hollinger come up with this premise on the Athletic for the entire NBA. We’re going to take it. We’re going to steal it. We’re going to apply it to the Hornets and then we’ll rumage through the Siko satchel. All today locked on Hornets. You are Locked on Hornets, your daily Charlotte Hornets podcast. Part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. In a minute, cuz we live. [Music] It’s Locked on Hornets, part of the Locked On podcast network. It’s your team every day. Thanks for making us your first listen. We’re free. We’re available anywhere you get your pods. That includes YouTube. Check us out anywhere you get your pods. Um, and subscribe to YouTube, by the way. Do all that. Rate us, like us, do all of it. Every hornets boxcore.com. Doug Branson. Go check out his substack. Starting to pop off a little bit. I saw the pod that you recorded with the Evan Hail. So, good stuff from Evan on every Hornetsboxcore.com. Shout out to the Super Hornet, man. We salute you. Also, check out Yahoo Sports Daily with Jason Fitz and Caroline Finton. I’m Walker Mail. Listen to me WFNZ every weekday from 12 to 3 p.m. Sports Radio 927 FM. This episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now, new customers can bet just $5 and if your bet wins, you’ll get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. That’s right. Head to fanduel.com to get started. So, thought a fun premise would be to completely take John Hollinger’s content away from him and apply it here because that’s what radio people do. That’s what podcast people do. You don’t do it, Doug. Well, to be fair, we it’s Hollinger’s idea for sure. We’re giving him credit and also he lists like 27 players in this article and not a single one of them dawn the teal and purple. It would be one thing if we were coming on here and stealing his content and stealing his Charlotte Hornet who he named in the article. But that’s not the case. We’re just doing this is just fair and balanced over here. We’re just like got to get some Hornets content in the in this national media landscape. We’re actually finishing the job he started. I like that. And it this is a group project and we’re finishing what he started. You’re welcome. That’s right. He’s all in. We’re all in. I want some proceeds from the subscriptions that you have to your page to the athletic because of us finishing this job. So, here’s what he means by hinge players in the NBA. Yeah. Who who are the hinge players in the NBA to watch? Here’s how he describes what a hinge player is. players who are interesting enough to possibly make a real impact this season, but have also shown enough warts that we can’t take this possibility for granted throughout the preseason and the start of the regular season. Here are 11, I guess 12. So, 12 total. Here are 11 other players who aren’t household names whom I’ll be paying very close attention to. So, I guess we can play with this definition a little bit. So, hinge players, right? guys. Basically, I view it as wide range of outcomes, but also somewhat more of a deep cut, the sickos, if you will, and you’ll be paying attention to what they’re going to be doing early on because that’s going to go a long way in telling us just how much of an impact they’ll provide all throughout the season. That’s a lot of moving parts in this definition, but I feel good about it. Does that make sense to you, all that criteria we have to try to figure out? It does, but it’s a wide range of kinds of players and situations. I mean, you’ve got Reed Shepard in this list, uh, someone that was a a highly uh, touted rookie who then gets buried in the G-League because he’s on a team that stops with a lot of talent. You’ve got John Collins, sort of other end of the spectrum, a little bit of an older player. Biggest name on here, by the way, I would say, like most popular, the the casual fan. Who what’s the the name they have the best chance having known? It’s John Collins. A lot of other deep deep cuts here on this list. Yeah. Then it’s Ryan Rollins. Then it’s Ne Clifford, Jarus Walker, Jace Richardson. That’s that’s still a sicko name, but somewhat a little bit more known. Yeah. So, I had when you posed this to me and you gave me all of the, you know, criteria. A name did pop into my head immediately and I I haven’t been able to talk myself out of it. Yeah. Let’s hear it. Share the name. I think it’s Trey Man. I think Trey man is still a deep cut and because he he like Reed Shepard got buried in Oklahoma City before being traded to the Hornets and then with the injury on top of that I just think everyone’s forgotten about Trey Mann who doesn’t pay very close attention to the Charlotte Hornets and yet just in that sample size that we got post all post post trade deadline and then at the uh beginning of the season before his back went out. Like we were seeing a player that we were talking about as like a potential sixman of the year competitor and and now he’s in a little bit of a different situation and that the back court is a little bit loaded up. Uh but you’re you saw him in that first preseason game have a big impact in terms of his passing ability and maybe his role changes as a scorer. But I still think like a great Trey man year can really change the outcome maybe like five or six wins worth Hornets wise if you’re getting those if you’re getting like max Trey man contributions off the bench alongside average Colin Ston and even like just meets expectations Khan Canipple if all those guys stay healthy I do think that gives you like five or six wins. I thought about three or four names other than Trey man, but I like your case in that Trey man hitting the ceiling of what his ability is probably does have the biggest impact on wins and losses for this team as we start to talk about win projections. But I I I’ll go down my plan B, plan C, and so on. There was one player I I couldn’t shake this player. Um, you know, nationally, I think a lot of people would tell you it’s Musadate because they expect a lot of minutes there. I’m going to go Ryan Caulkrrener as my answer here. The reason I go Ryan Caulkriner, he’s the only player on the roster that possesses the skill set he possesses. He’s the only one. Mason Plumbley is not going to protect the rim like Ryan Cochrrener could. He is not as tall as Kaul Brrener. He is by far the tallest player on a really small team. And when John Hollinger, actually, I’ll go back to him. I’m going to finish the job he started here too. He was talking uh about some of the more confusing teams in the NBA with Zack Low. They do the annual pod of most confusing teams in the association. I thought maybe the Hornets would be there because I could see how they’d be confusing to a tiny degree, but they didn’t show up. when he was rattling off some of these teams, I noticed a lot of them were very large and they signed a bunch of centers and they signed a bunch of power forwards and they signed a bunch of long armed dudes on the perimeter and they were struggling in the back court. Maybe it’s because the Hornets signed all of them, but you talk about zigging while everybody else is zagging. The Hornets are much smaller than the Houston Rockets who need Reed Shepard to produce cuz Fred Van Valite just got hurt and now all they have is Reed Shepard. Toronto guards, who needs him? We don’t need any of them. And it fell. There was another team in there. Was it the Celtics? No, the Celtics have a terrible center rotation. I forget the other team that also decided to just go all in on bigs. Um, but it felt like the Hornets had a lot of the guards that would be able to combat that. And yeah, it’s going to be troublesome going up against that size. Except there is one guy on the team. There is one guy on the team that might be able to do something against your traditional centers in the league, provide some resistance at the cup, and that’s Ryan Cochrinter. And Doug, if he learns really quickly because he’s an older basketball player, if it is true what Zack Low says all the time that he mentions Kaul Brener and that the Hornets are in love with him, right? They love him. If all that’s true and he gets out there on the court more than it seems like he should right now based on summer league and based on the first preseason game and he’s competent, you can do more things with him being a part of the rotation than you can without him playing any minutes. Right? If he is just too manipulated on defense where his size is rendered useless, if he’s way too slow, if he’s too slow picking up the offense just from a mental standpoint, well then yeah, now we just don’t have that skill set. We we can’t use it. But if if if he’s competent, if now you have an entirely different player, nobody else can match what he does elsewhere on the roster. That’s the name that I came up with first and foremost. That’s that’s an interesting one. I didn’t really even consider any of the rookies just based on Hollingers’s evaluation here. I felt like you needed to find a a veteran player where like the hinge was going to be more on because they they’re already a little bit comfortable with the NBA game. It’s like more less can they get acclimated and more can they actually achieve the things that you hope they can achieve. But I see all of your points, particularly the way this roster is constructed. I like the idea of the Charlotte Hornets being the person in your fantasy draft that takes like three or four tight ends by the by the seventh round and you go to get a tight end, you’re like, “What the hell happened? Where are all the good tight ends?” And it’s the one guy who has no idea what he’s doing. So I got to do I got to go with Kyle Pittz again. I got to go with the fourth year of the potential Kyle Pittz breakout. God. And then they end up trading one of those tight ends, the guy that drafted three or four. It It does. You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of middle school, uh, my seventh grade basketball team. Okay. And in order to prove a point, Coach Templeton, shout out to Coach Templeton out there, wherever he is. What he decided to do to illustrate how important everybody was to the team, he had bigs play smalls five on five. I actually quite like this. Even now at 32, he played all the guards on one team and he played all the big centers. And of course, I was over with the centers being taller than almost everybody. And yeah, they were a lot faster. We were a lot tired. We’re a lot more tired. But we were getting all the rebounds on the miss shots, right? And of course, he was trying to illustrate, yeah, the the correct way to build a basketball team is by having a mix of both. Except it feels like the Rockets forgot about that, the Hornets forgot about that, and the Raptors forgot all about that. So, Coach Templeton, they could use your services at on any of those coaching staffs. No, no, it’s a great idea. In fact, me and my buddies, uh, we we do that at the local rec center still. We go where the afterchoolers are and we just yam on these like 9 10 year olds just like crush them. It makes us feel better. Uh, I this this center talk does give me an opportunity to get one of my favorite quotes from Charles Lee uh during a practice after the first preseason game. This is from Sam Pearly on Twitter, Sam_Purley. I love this quote. It’s from Charles Lee. He said, quote, “We got to see some different rotations.” Talking about OKC, some different lineups against a team that plays a different style of basketball, which was nice. OKC’s shooting bigs isn’t something we get to see at practice. Yeah, tough cell phone, which is a I don’t know if he meant it, but a little bit of a dig at his own, you know, recipe here. Not his own. He didn’t build it. He didn’t build it. But the the the ingredients that he has, one of those ingredients is not shooting big and you can’t practice against it. A a little more subtle than we don’t have any allars on this team. That’s just direct. Charles Lee with the subtle cell phone. Let’s talk about more maybe just a little bit of the Hornets hinge players uh nominees that didn’t show up. That’s still to come. Locked on Hornets everywhere. Also got to get to the Siko satchel and wind projection. So, okay, let’s try this again. Now, all that’s still to come. Locked on Hornets. [Music] This episode is brought to you by Quo. One of the tools that helped make a huge difference for business owners these days is Quo, formerly Open Phone. It’s the same great business phone system you’ve heard me talk about before, just with a new name. And here’s why it matters. Every missed call is money left on the table. When customer conversations count, you need a phone system that keeps you connected 247. Quo is the number one business phone system that streamlines customer communications. It works right through an app on your phone or computer. So, no more carrying two phones or relying on a landline. No more Kevin Gates in it. I got two phones. No, I got Quo. I got formerly open phone. See why over 90,000 businesses trust Quo. Formerly open phone. get started free and you can get 20% off your first 6 months at quo qoquo.com/lockedonba. That’s quo.com/lockonba. And if you got existing numbers with another service, Quo will port them over at no extra charge. Quote, no missed calls, no missed customers. More locked on hornets ahead. Other candidates that popped up in my brain. I I did kind of focus a little more on some of the rookies. Liam McN to be fair, there are a lot of them. Yeah, there are there’s there’s there’s four. Uh so I had Caulkriner. I I thought of Liam McNeely just because of the surprise element of what he did the first couple of games in summer league, but I think there’s enough depth in the front court at where he would be playing at that 34. Grant Williams and he comes back. Josh Green, you you could probably play down defensively if you wanted to. Um, so I I yeah, I thought about it, but then I moved on. Here’s one. Tan Salon is going to be a hinge player in my opinion. And for me, hinge player, I’m I’m I’m playing a little fast and loose with the definition, I admit. But hinge player meaning if he’s able to do anything, we view that as a bonus. And he does have some interesting tools that not many other players on this team have. He is long. He can run fast. He would like to he would like to play in transition. I mean, he’ll run the floor quite well. He started to put together put it together and slowing down a tiny bit as to gain more control in transition. Will he be able to shoot from the corner? If you can shoot from the corner now, that helps with the lack of size that you might have with Musa. So instead of okay, we can size up a little more at the four with Ton playing that spot and we can have Musa at the five. So yeah, it’s not great at five, but we have a Ton’s as tall as Musa or close to it. So we do have some size there. And really, if he’s hitting corner threes, that’s going to go a long way in helping him see the floor. plus the defensive relentlessness that he plays with, smarter defensive uh minded player this year, just growing in the NBA and maturing. If you don’t have to hit on everything, and in fact, I think it’s quite impossible for him to do so. But if you just get a little better to to like a decent amount more better at a couple of things, shooting, knowing where to be on the defensive end of the court, just a tiny bit from a first round pick, then I think you can see the floor and provide a real impact. So, I thought about putting him up there. I hate to argue with you again. We don’t argue much on this show. You and I typically see eye to eye, but I’m going to argue with you on this one, too, because according and I’m just going based on Hollingers’s sort of root definition here. Players who are interesting enough to possibly make a real impact this season, but have also shown enough warts that we can’t take this possibility for granted. Now, how I interpret that is that they have they have shown enough of a sample size of being interesting, of being impactful that you you think, hey, if they can sustain that, then we’ve got something. But they’ve also shown enough wards to go, can they sustain that? I haven’t seen anything remotely like that from Tan Salon yet. He’s still for in my mind out of the hinge category more of the maybe, I don’t know, kind of I guess like I just haven’t seen enough. Anything is a bonus category. Anything at all is a bonus player. You I think you defined it in his own category and that category is not hinge player. And and in fact, you keep teeing me up here on Charles Lee quotes because I didn’t know if I was going to be able to get this one in, but again from Sam Perley on Tan Salon, Charles Lee said this. His body looks different. He’s moving with more confidence because he is stronger. Kudos to him for buying into that and figuring out the importance of it. He’s embraced the challenge of trying to guard a lot of different people and having some versatility. I read that quote and I don’t I don’t really take that in as like, oh, okay, Tan is like he’s ready for more action. They’ve they’ve got a defined sort of set of things that they want him to do and they’ve got a set place in the rot. I just look at that and I think, man, that’s a lot of words to say he’s out. He’s trying, folks. He’s out there. he’s doing is he’s getting he’s gotten bigger. He got his muscles look great, but like there’s nothing in there about the things that we all see, which is like skill sets, uh, consistent production, you know, I I just think that they are very much in a hope and pray and roll the dice on Tan Salon, which to me puts him out of the range of hinge player, which is why again, Trey Man, that’s a player I keep coming back to. I like your I actually like Musa if he wasn’t playing out of position. I like the Musa name. Um, you know, Khan Canipple, if he doesn’t already exceed that this season, you know, I could throw him into a second season hinge player, but I think he’s going to far out exceed that in his in his rookie season. To be fair, too, with I am playing with the definition. And I think John Hollinger did immediately too because I don’t think some of the players that he lists fit what he talks about at the very beginning of this because Reed Shepard for instance we haven’t seen anything from Reed Shepard that shows he’s real NBA player at this point but he’s first in college. In college you got in college he did. In college he did and Ton overseas there were some people in our YouTube comments that said hey we should really be paying attention to this guy. We ignored him and didn’t talk about him. We talked more about Reed Shepard and Stfan Castle, but he did in college. He did not his first year in the league. Nick Clifford is also on the list. He’s a rookie. So, I think John Hollinger played a little fast and loose with it, too. I think for me, the the only thing I would say, if I can sell you with one more attempt, it would be Reed Shepard is on the list, right? Reed Shepard is on the list. I think he probably would have been on this list without the Fred Van Vleet injury, but he’s definitely worthy of being on this list with the Fred Van Fleet injury cuz he played now they’re depending on him. I could see that with injuries on the Hornets. Stop me if you’ve heard that before. Hornets injuries, it could happen. Grant Williams is coming back from a pretty devastating knee injury. And then who’s the other form that they have that can stretch the floor? It’s Miles. I think we’re done. That’s it. So, if Grant takes a little while to cook this year and Miles goes down with, you know, any kind of injury or you just need some depth. I mean, straight up, I’ I’d like to have more than one guy. So, if Grant doesn’t play for a little bit and then Miles needs a breather, who are you going to that can help just a little bit, provide some gravity from the corner? I and that’s if you can’t go to Ton, which it’s entirely possible, maybe probable that you can’t. Um, then you ain’t going to anybody. You ain’t going to anybody. I It would be cool for him to give us just 15. Can we get 15 minutes from you here and there? If And if you can and they’re not disastrous, that goes a long way. But I I myself in your in your shoes, too. I don’t feel good about it. It could happen though. I wish the NBA sometimes uh was tag team wrestling rules because like if Tan Salon could just stand on the sideline and just right right in the corner and just like as somebody’s walking up or like hockey rules where he could just like jump in really quick and somebody can jump off and then he could be stand in the corner and just bango and then tag right out like that. There’s a useful Tan Salon right at this moment in in that in that sort of scenario, but in the scenario where he has to be out there and run up and down the floor. And I and I’m not I’m just like just setting screens and then getting out of the way, I saw him struggle with that. And maybe again, maybe he’s better now. We just we need to see more of him in the preseason before I’m like ready to fully make that evaluation. Um, but yeah, I just I I don’t I don’t know that he’s a hinge player for me. He He hasn’t he hasn’t shown a lot for us to have a ton of faith right now. And hopefully he does, but he hasn’t shown a lot to have a lot of faith in what he’ll do this upcoming season. All right, coming up next on the Locked on Hornets podcast everywhere. Win projections. Were they kind? Whatever Doug has in store, were those people kind of the Hornets this upcoming year? We’ll get to it coming up next. [Music] This episode is brought to you by Prize Picks. Every day we make decisions, but on Prize Picks, being right can actually get you paid. Don’t miss the excitement of this football season with prize picks, where it’s good to be right. It’s kind of the mantra we’ve been going with on lockdown Hornets and Wesson Walker lately with some of the disagreements. Playing prize picks is such a fun, simple way to add more excitement to football. You just pick more or less on player projections like Josh Allen’s passing yards or Saquon Barkley’s rushing for a touchdown props and you’re in the game once you choose. So download the Prize Picks app today and use code locked on NBA to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. That’s code lockdown NBA for $50 in lineups after your first $5 lineup. Prize picks, it’s good to be right. That’s a funny tagline to me because it feels like it actually does pertain to us on this pod on my show. All right. More to come. Lol. [Music] Okay. All right. What What you got, Doug? One more thing on Ton. And I’m sure one of us may have had this take, not even take, but just had this piece of analysis, which I’m not even sure is very smart, but just something that popped into my head. And that’s the rule on this show is that if it pops into my head, it usually comes out of my mouth. If if you’re a team that that is super confident in a rookie development the previous season, do you take four rookies in the next draft? You know what I’m saying? Like if you were like if you were super super confident, I don’t know. I I don’t you know I think that you have to take that into consideration. I think and it doesn’t mean that I don’t think that it means that that they’re giving up on Tan Salon, but I’m just saying would you invest in four more rookies on a team that’s already super young if you were like, “Oh man, yeah, like next season for sure because that the the the thing that rookies run into and regardless of whether you’re 18 or 19 years old when you’re drafted, the thing that rookies run into is they run out of time and they run out of space in the rotation as teams continue to grow and change. Sometimes with them and sometimes without them and so like if you’re teasing you’re like I got I got four other young players to contend with now. Yeah, I I think you can though ju just because of where the Hornets are in their developmental stages. I think we’ve talked about the Thunder strategy and you just put a bunch of young players and try to mix and match some veterans where you’re not doing the Suns rebuild where it’s just all young players and no vets and they don’t know how to do anything out there on the floor. I think you do have a nicer enough mix and match at least you drafted players that really don’t have anything to do with what Ton is going to play. I mean Khan, Seion, Liam McNeely, they are not the same position as Ton. The closest I think you could get to is Liam. So, I I I get your point. I think I think you can, especially at this stage. If you were really trying to win right now, then I don’t think you would. Um, okay. Win projections. What you got for the people? This is from Kevin Pelton of ESPN, and you made a comment leading into the break about whether or not they were going to be nice to the Hornets. I think that all of the win projections so far that I’ve read, even though they all have the Hornets near the bottom of the Eastern Conference, and spoiler alert, Kevin Pelton no different here, I think they’ve all been nice. I don’t think any of them have been particularly mean to the Hornets and saying like, you know, their ass or anything like that. You know, I think they’ve they re to me the subtext that I’ve read in a lot of these is I kind of like what they’re doing, but I simply cannot bet on them being good after so many years of being bad. Like I cannot I cannot in good conscience elevate them based on zero evidence. And I think Kevin Pelton here in the same boat. He has the Hornets 13th in the Eastern Conference, only better than the Brooklyn Nets and the Washington Wizards. Projected wins 28 and a half. The ESPN bet over under total, by the way, is 26.5. So, he’s given them a little two- win boost. And then he says why they project to be better than their total. He says this things can’t go as badly as last season. Kevin’s new here. Kevin’s new here. We’ve been saying that for 5 years. We said that during the what was it 27 win season and then we said it after the 25 23 win season and now we’re saying it after the 19 win season. We didn’t get to 20. Uh what is funny is if they barely hit the over on 28 and a half, they would get to that magical 29game mark, which you deemed magical because it would mean a solid 10ame improvement, which we loved saying about James Burggo as evidence to not fire him when he improved by 10 wins each of the last couple of years. Yeah. So Charles Lee should not get fired if you have the magical 10ame improvement. You got to get 11. You got to get So Charles, you got to get 11. you you can’t get 10. You got to get 11 in two consecutive years so you don’t get fired. I think that’s that’s the magical mark. And if you do that, then now we’re starting to cook here in Charlotte. Um, all right. This is what Kevin goes on to say. He says things can’t go as badly as last season when the Hornets win 19 and 63 with the third most games lost due to injury in the league. Adding Colin Ston will give the Hornets a go-to score with LaMelo Ball on the bench or sideline. and 2023 number two pick Brandon Miller should be expected to take a step forward in his development. So there you go, Kevin Pelton looking at the Hornets and saying, you know, two young players with the potential to play really well. Plus, they, you know, the Hornets went and added a little bit of depth around LaMelo Ball. They they he’s LaMelo Ball is the kid from A Christmas Story. They just wrapped him up in three coats of Colin Ston and Coniple and Trey man and you know now they just hope that that’s enough. I can’t move my arms down. LaMelo Ball Randy, they’re one and the same. Um 28 and a half 28 and a half I feel is a good mark. I’m with you. I think that is kind given the Hornets history. It’s kind of like the inverse of the Heat where you just give them the benefit of the doubt every single year because they’re going to find somebody that got cut from another team who’s going to sign with the Heat and then he’ll turn that opportunity with Miami into some 4-year $20 million uh a year contract and it you have some real value, right? It’s the inverse where Miami, even when they have Rodney McGrder playing for them, they’re going to find a way to sneak into the playoffs or get close to it. When the Hornets maybe even have stars, it doesn’t matter. They’re either going to get hurt and they’re whatever’s going to happen and they’re not going to reach their total. So, I get it. I think history is doing a lot of work. Not a lot. I I think history is doing some work here. Um, but I I I feel very differently than I usually do about the Hornets where it’s like, okay, I yeah, I don’t see it this season, but this is like I don’t feel great about the high-end marks they could hit, but here’s what that would look like. I feel good about some of the high-end marks they could hit. Like, I feel better about the potential of them reaching their ceiling this year than I have in quite some time, Doug. And so maybe that’s why I’m a little more optimistic on them reaching and getting past that 30 win mark. Okay, I’m going to take analyst hat off and I’m going to put on fan hat and I’ll say with my fan hat on that I’m glad that they are not overp projecting the Hornets because they would do this for years with the Detroit Pistons before Kate Cunningham finally turned the lights on. They would do this for years with the Pistons. They would say, “Oh, this is a 40- win team. Watch it. They’re coming.” And then the Detroit Pistons would embarrass themselves, poop the bed, and fall to the bottom of the and and in one in one case almost set the Bobcats mark for worst record of all time. So I would rather not be in that boat where where you know, you were over projected and then you’re an embarrassment. Um, you know, I just think that this is to me the projections have been fair. What’s interesting, Walker, is that if you look at the projected wins for the Hornets at 28 and a half, you jump next to the 12 seed in the Eastern Conference, according to Kevin Pelton, it’s the Chicago Bulls with a 9 and a half win jump. That’s the chasm between the Horn. It’s really like Hornets Nets, Wizards at the bottom, and then you’ve got a ladder to climb before you get to the Bulls at 38, Philly at 38, uh Miami at 40. And he really likes Toronto at 40. I don’t know about that. Uh that’s that’s really a coin flip on if the Brandon Ingram experiment works. And then he has Boston at 45.6. That’s probably good because it looks like Tatum’s coming back sooner than everybody thought. Uh but he also has the Pacers as the four seed with 45.9 wins, you know. So, you know, I think there’s some things to quibble with here. And in the quibbling, the question is, can the Hornets, you know, could they take two of I don’t know how many times they play the Pacers this year. if they play in four, two of four, you know, can they take one from Milwaukee? Can they take a couple from Toronto? And you start to build those into, all right, 28 suddenly becomes 35 and then you’re like, wow, that’s a that’s a great season. Or can it become, you know, 29 and then it’s like, well, you got at least you got 10. Yeah, I think that I think that’s good math. I like getting the math there to try to get past a certain threshold and I feel decent about it because we are in the Eastern Conference and there is so much down about the Eastern Conference with some of the stars that either aren’t playing like you mentioned with Tatum and Tyrese Hallebertton regardless of how fast they come back. I I mean Celtics, they’re not incentivized to lose, but they are incentivized to not go over the luxury tax and you know that also means shedding some salary and then just playing with the guys that you have left over and not necessarily caring as much about going as far as you possibly could in the postseason because you’re down a man. Same thing with the Pacers. You lose Turner, you lose Hallebertton. That’s going to be tough for them and they have to rely on Jay Huff who is unproven and Isaiah Jackson who is unproven which by the way helps Musa Devate quite a bit in your Pacers scenario. The fact that he gets to go against those guys. I’ll I’ll I’ll at least call it a wash depending on how well they play. I like Jay Huff but I like Musa. So yeah, I’m with it. I’m with those examples. Final thing uh before we move on to Siko Satchel or just end the show. What you got? Yeah, no time for Siko Satchel. you. But the sickos in the sicko brigade, they really came through. I asked you to fill the sicko satchel up and you did. We had some because we missed yesterday. Um we almost had technical issues that killed the show today, but luckily we we were able to power through. But uh we’re going to save the Siko satchel for uh Thursday, Friday, and into next week. But thank you uh jointex.comlockdownhornets if you want your question answered. Final thing from me is that when you’re talking about 28 wins, 35 wins, 29 wins, 38, whatever, to me, you particularly if you already have some talent on your team, and the Hornets do with LaMelo and Brandon, they’re getting mentioned in these win projections. When you have that, it does all come down to health in my mind. Like if this team is not the third most lost games due to injury, if they’re in the middle of the pack or I mean they’re due so it’s you know if they could be towards the top of that list in the good way of not losing players then I think the the Hornets have a shot here. The the the then the jump from that is do you have the right pieces to win a playin game or a se or a playoff series? They’re not ready to answer that question yet. They’re not even close to being ready to answer that question yet. But I think if they can stay healthy, they can outdo the ESPN bet total of 26.5 and even outdo 28.5 here from Kevin Pelton. All right, that’ll do it for Locktown Hornets. Thanks for making us your first listen. We’re free. We’re available anywhere you get your podcast. That also includes YouTube. Check out Doug’s Substack, every hornetsboxcore.com, and check out his show he helps produce, Yahoo Sports Daily with Jason Fitz and Caroline Fenton. I’m Walker Mail. Listen to me WFNZ every weekday from 12 to 3:00 p.m. Sports Radio 927 FM on Wes and Walker. Have a great rest of your day. We’ll be back with you tomorrow. [Music]

On today’s show, we borrow a premise from The Athletic’s John Hollinger to identify the Charlotte Hornets’ most important “hinge player.” This is the non-star player with a wide range of outcomes whose performance could be the difference between a 20-win and a 30-win season. We make the case for several candidates, with Tre Mann leading the list as a potential Sixth Man of the Year contender. We also explore the unique impact that rookies Ryan Kalkbrenner and Tidjane Salaun could have if they are ready to contribute right away.

Then, we turn our attention to the latest win projections from Kevin Pelton of ESPN, who has the Hornets finishing 13th in the Eastern Conference with 28.5 wins. We examine his reasoning, which is rooted in the idea that “things can’t go as badly as last season” with injuries, plus the addition of Collin Sexton and the expected development of Brandon Miller. We discuss whether this projection is fair and look at how injuries to other Eastern Conference teams could open the door for the Hornets to potentially outperform that number and make a surprising jump in the standings.

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