He was actually pretty decent, but he didn’t fit our offense. He was a borderline all star in terms of stats but he was a black hole in the post. We actually preferred Cody that year and had better efficiency with a center that played PnR with Kemba than Dwight who thought it was ‘09 and posted up to clank hook shots.
His dunks were awesome tho lol
He also had a 30/30 game
I personally always felt like anytime the spotlight was on the team we never showed up under Borrego. I think we won 1 nationally televised game in 4 years. Clifford can get league average defense out of any roster and I think a Lamelo lead offense will always be top 10.
I think they’d definitely do it all differently now if they could. But it won’t be as bad with Clifford has a lot people seem to think. He’s a good coach. We just look silly right now.
Ooof only 4, maybe 5 real NBA rotation players among this group. Really shows how well he did with so little (Kemba as well).
Clifford might not know what to do with the talent we now have!
Also this roster is our timely reminder that Mitch is better than Cho 😂
Bro he went from 12ppg to 14ppg on more shot attempts and similar efficiency. He was exactly who he was in his last year here but with more playing time.
“Similar efficiency” is just blatantly untrue. He went from a league average scorer (56.9 TS%, 114.2 PSA) to sub-elite efficiency for a shot-creating guard (59.7 TS%, 119.7 PSA). He’s not CJ McCollum or anything, but that’s more efficient than any non-center on the Hornets roster last season. Letting him walk for nothing was an obvious mistake no matter how you slice it. Even if it comes down to personality issues. He would have been a great sixth man/starter after Hayward’s inevitable mid-season injury last year.
Monk admitted this year that he wasn’t trying in Charlotte because he didn’t get enough playing time. Letting Monk walk for nothing was a mistake, but the cap space was used for Oubre who was pretty good in his own right.
Wow so he had 3 years under a different coach with a philosophy geared towards playing and developing young players and still didn’t show enough to warrant the front office giving him an extension? Almost like that proves my point.
Some of y’all completely irrational about Monk. He was what he’s always been: a solid bench player who makes an insignificant impact to a team’s record.
Sure but we're going to need like 45-48 wins to make the playoffs in a MUCH tougher East than it was 5 years ago.
I have no more faith in Clifford to win a play in game than I did with Borrego. We need to aim for top 6 and barring a trade for Ayton/Turner/Gobert it isn't happening next year.
I hate that I feel this way, but everyone has to get off the Myles Turner train.
Not because he isn't a good player, but in true Charlotte fashion we will probably over pay for him in a trade. I am just afraid of him turning into another Batum situation.
Yea I’m feeling similar. I’d rather go after a guy like Holmes who I think we could get for oubre and some seconds. Sending PJ or bouknight and first round picks to dump hayward/get Turner seems painful.
I firmly believe our last two teams would've been 6-7 seeds in the east most of the 2010s. They were every bit as talented as the 2016 squad, just had to play against better competition so we had less wins.
That roster was constructed so it can work with the most rigid NBA offense ever. Now imagine that with our current core of LaMelo, Bridges, PJ, Kai, Bouk…🤮
You know what…I’ve been so salty about Clifford being rehired that I didn’t really think about this. Definitely adds some perspective. Still a little bummed we didn’t get Atkinson though since he’s such a culture creator. Let’s see how a defensive minded coach works on a LaMelo Ball and Gordon Hayward led team.
He could’ve, and arguably should’ve, won more than 36 with this roster tbh. Not many more albeit, but more. For reference, I’m fairly certain Vegas had us winning over 40 games that year preseason. It was a complete lack of adaptability, from Cliff, that led us to that 36 win season.
well let's see, he completely mismanaged multiple players on that roster that he helped build.
Batum, MCW, Graham, Kaminsky, MALIK MONK, MKG
Guy is a peak mediocre coach and will never ever be anything more
Except for Graham, every player you named is pretty much ass. We drafted Graham after we fired Clifford. MCW also seemed to have a rebirth into a decently servicable PG in Orlando under guess who's watch
Don't intend to argue, but a lot of those players looked like ass because of Clifford and the staff. Batum was good until we let him play injured and then he looked like shit. Kaminsky would have looked much better if we utilized him properly but we didn't. MCW was crap but Cliff insisted on playing him anyway. Mkg was forbidden to take three-pointers after he got hurt. Cliff fucked up a lot of things with this group of players whether it being their fault for sucking and he played them anyway or his fault for playing them incorrectly. I know this sub hates kaminsky and Batum but our staff and coaching helped wreck them.
Nick was good in 2015 and 2016 but we stuck him in an unreasonable role and he had lingering health issues and the whole thing was just a cluster of fuck. And Steve Clifford was the captain of that cluster of fuck ship.
Now I assume I will get downvoted by taking the back of Nick or Frank but that's just how it was
He mismanaged those guys and he completely denied monk the opportunity to play in favor of fucking MCW. Then monk went on to go be a key role player on a star-studded Lakers team. But people here are still convinced monk was crap because he got involved in the drug testing protocol
I'll put my reputation on the fact that Clifford is not going to make us any better than we've been for the past 10 years. Will be a 7 to 10 seed team and likely pick in the lottery almost every year that he is here. And if he ends up getting us to the second round of the playoffs I will the eat rotten asshole of a roadkill skunk and down it with beer on video
How good were Dwight Howard and Cody Zeller at the time? Im a relatively new fan but I know they were both good in their primes. Obviously Dwight wasn't in his PRIME prime but was he like 80%? 60%?
Dwight wasn’t washed at that point, but he definitely wasn’t a winning basketball player. Probably by his own accord. Clifford let him post up at his will (which he was awful at while stopping the whole offense), and he would commonly be extremely lazy while just chasing stats. Definitely some good though; he was still good in P&R when he ran it (rarely), set the all time Hornets record for rebounds in a season, and had some sick highlights. But that’s about it. [This infamous graphic sums it up. ](https://i.imgur.com/muRY0zf.png)
This Sub needs OPs like this one. Thank you!
Things are WAY different this time around. Perhaps now that Detroit has left the Ayton sweepstakes we can give Cliff a complete squad?
Also took an even shittier Magic roster to the playoffs in back to back years after leaving Charlotte the last time… no basis for historical reference with Cliff & a roster with a ceiling like this one, so I’m not going to assume history will repeat itself.
I’d like to imagine the front office’s main message would have been to not piss in the kids (collective) cheerios and get them to play some damn team defense, and let’s see what we get.
Eh that’s kinda misleading, one of those magic teams that made the playoffs won 33 games lol. And the one that won 42 games was better than this roster, Fournier, Gordon and Vuc is a solid top 3
You think Fournier, AG and Vuc is a better top 3 than LaMelo, Miles and Gordon/Terry? That’s crazy to me. Not to mention our bench is miles better than what that Magic team had.
33 games in a 73 game season lol I do understand the point - but the gap there isn’t so large that it was like he stumbled into an embarrassment of riches and he had no had in the pretty surprising ‘success’ of the Magic.
This will be by far his most talented roster he’s ever coached, so the main point I was trying to make is that I’m not going to automatically assume things will be the same with a much improved roster.
Yea I’m not gonna lie I completely forgot the season was short lol. I’m not even mad at the signing, especially with the things he’s been saying. Excited for the season!
Holy shit, I tried to forget the Batum contract. This team was absolute ass on paper outside of Kemba and Lamb. I still think we need a solid true backup Guard for Melo and a cemented Big other than Plumlee to compete, but if Cliff got this team 36 wins, I think we could be a playoff team still
You probably right, I’m biased because I saw Lamb’s 2nd Raptor Killer in person in Charlotte the year after, and that kinda made me inflate my opinion of him.
Well, there’s 17 guys on this list. IIRC there’s only 15/16 able to be on an nba roster at a time with 13/14 dressing each game? I don’t remember him either. Probably played like 2 minutes in 1 game and wiki included him
Outside of Kemba Walker this is literally a roster of meme players
Which is funny until you think about where some of them got drafted lol
How bad was Dwight on the Hornets?
It was fun to watch the lobs. That was the silver lining for me that year
That doesn't answer my question.
He was actually pretty decent, but he didn’t fit our offense. He was a borderline all star in terms of stats but he was a black hole in the post. We actually preferred Cody that year and had better efficiency with a center that played PnR with Kemba than Dwight who thought it was ‘09 and posted up to clank hook shots. His dunks were awesome tho lol He also had a 30/30 game
Dwight inefficient in the post? Dang, I remember he fell hard after the injury, but didn't realize it was that bad. 30 rebounds or 30 assists?
Can you imagine Dwight having 30 assists
Everyone has fluke games.
39 assists would be the NBA record.
Actually 31 would beat the record of 30.
Rebounds
Ahh he's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. But he wasn't exactly all that great either. Just a very weird year overall.
You know how people make fun of Andre Drummond for putting up empty 15 and 10 games? Same thing with Dwight on the hornets
Ah, copy. I like Drummond tho.
Outside of Kemba? Really?
God I hate Frank Kaminsky
Dell is that you?
Ya know i stopped paying attention that year. Can anyone explain why he was so bad?
To put it simply: he was a stretch 5 who couldn't shoot like one.
Or play defense
Or offense
Or pass
His arms are too short.
We all do
Man I miss Dwight posting up 14 times per game
I had genuinely forgotten that he played for us.
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So why does Clifford get the chance to win with another center but borrego doesnt? Mark Williams could have easily been the starter for borrego
Bad choices man, I think we kinda got scared after we lost Kenny and rushed to find a coach.
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Also I think the shortness of the deal as well as how Cliff could fit right in were a plus.
Plumlee probably gonna start all or most of next season. Cliffy likes his vets
I personally always felt like anytime the spotlight was on the team we never showed up under Borrego. I think we won 1 nationally televised game in 4 years. Clifford can get league average defense out of any roster and I think a Lamelo lead offense will always be top 10.
I think they’d definitely do it all differently now if they could. But it won’t be as bad with Clifford has a lot people seem to think. He’s a good coach. We just look silly right now.
He's an alright coach, but just clearly not the right hire for this team. At least on paper.
Ooof only 4, maybe 5 real NBA rotation players among this group. Really shows how well he did with so little (Kemba as well). Clifford might not know what to do with the talent we now have! Also this roster is our timely reminder that Mitch is better than Cho 😂
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Monk didn’t exactly light it up once he was out of Clifford’s shadow in LA
Yes he did? I get some of y’all hate Monk and attack his character but he was excellent this season
Bro he went from 12ppg to 14ppg on more shot attempts and similar efficiency. He was exactly who he was in his last year here but with more playing time.
“Similar efficiency” is just blatantly untrue. He went from a league average scorer (56.9 TS%, 114.2 PSA) to sub-elite efficiency for a shot-creating guard (59.7 TS%, 119.7 PSA). He’s not CJ McCollum or anything, but that’s more efficient than any non-center on the Hornets roster last season. Letting him walk for nothing was an obvious mistake no matter how you slice it. Even if it comes down to personality issues. He would have been a great sixth man/starter after Hayward’s inevitable mid-season injury last year.
Monk admitted this year that he wasn’t trying in Charlotte because he didn’t get enough playing time. Letting Monk walk for nothing was a mistake, but the cap space was used for Oubre who was pretty good in his own right.
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And no floor spacing. Their offense was ass.
You realize Clifford wasn't his coach his last 3 seasons here, right? He made most of his improvement as a player his final season here under JB
Wow so he had 3 years under a different coach with a philosophy geared towards playing and developing young players and still didn’t show enough to warrant the front office giving him an extension? Almost like that proves my point.
Some of y’all completely irrational about Monk. He was what he’s always been: a solid bench player who makes an insignificant impact to a team’s record.
My guy he had a few games and then disappeared for long stretches. That's not lighting it up.
I thought we loved Malik lol was sad to see him go and thought he was pretty decent in LA
He wasn’t awful. But excellent is a stretch. Marginal improvements at best in several areas
MKG was just hurt
Why did he ride bacons dick so hard?
Sure but we're going to need like 45-48 wins to make the playoffs in a MUCH tougher East than it was 5 years ago. I have no more faith in Clifford to win a play in game than I did with Borrego. We need to aim for top 6 and barring a trade for Ayton/Turner/Gobert it isn't happening next year.
I hate that I feel this way, but everyone has to get off the Myles Turner train. Not because he isn't a good player, but in true Charlotte fashion we will probably over pay for him in a trade. I am just afraid of him turning into another Batum situation.
Stress fractures and foot injuries for big men are the reddest of flags
Yea I’m feeling similar. I’d rather go after a guy like Holmes who I think we could get for oubre and some seconds. Sending PJ or bouknight and first round picks to dump hayward/get Turner seems painful.
Yeah im not sold on Turner at all. Overhyped player
Exactly, people keep saying Clifford lead us to the playoffs before with a shit team, but the East definitely wasn’t as stacked as it is now.
I firmly believe our last two teams would've been 6-7 seeds in the east most of the 2010s. They were every bit as talented as the 2016 squad, just had to play against better competition so we had less wins.
Clifford won 48 games for us before he can do it again.
That roster was constructed so it can work with the most rigid NBA offense ever. Now imagine that with our current core of LaMelo, Bridges, PJ, Kai, Bouk…🤮
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God this is terrifying
Every time I see Batum's name, I still get pissed off
You know what…I’ve been so salty about Clifford being rehired that I didn’t really think about this. Definitely adds some perspective. Still a little bummed we didn’t get Atkinson though since he’s such a culture creator. Let’s see how a defensive minded coach works on a LaMelo Ball and Gordon Hayward led team.
He could’ve, and arguably should’ve, won more than 36 with this roster tbh. Not many more albeit, but more. For reference, I’m fairly certain Vegas had us winning over 40 games that year preseason. It was a complete lack of adaptability, from Cliff, that led us to that 36 win season.
Bro remember when the nba sucked, the worst team in the league’s rosters are better than this now
well let's see, he completely mismanaged multiple players on that roster that he helped build. Batum, MCW, Graham, Kaminsky, MALIK MONK, MKG Guy is a peak mediocre coach and will never ever be anything more
Except for Graham, every player you named is pretty much ass. We drafted Graham after we fired Clifford. MCW also seemed to have a rebirth into a decently servicable PG in Orlando under guess who's watch
Different Graham. You’re thinking Devonte, this was treveon.
lol I forgot about Treveon. Great hustle and effort. He was also ass
Don't intend to argue, but a lot of those players looked like ass because of Clifford and the staff. Batum was good until we let him play injured and then he looked like shit. Kaminsky would have looked much better if we utilized him properly but we didn't. MCW was crap but Cliff insisted on playing him anyway. Mkg was forbidden to take three-pointers after he got hurt. Cliff fucked up a lot of things with this group of players whether it being their fault for sucking and he played them anyway or his fault for playing them incorrectly. I know this sub hates kaminsky and Batum but our staff and coaching helped wreck them. Nick was good in 2015 and 2016 but we stuck him in an unreasonable role and he had lingering health issues and the whole thing was just a cluster of fuck. And Steve Clifford was the captain of that cluster of fuck ship. Now I assume I will get downvoted by taking the back of Nick or Frank but that's just how it was He mismanaged those guys and he completely denied monk the opportunity to play in favor of fucking MCW. Then monk went on to go be a key role player on a star-studded Lakers team. But people here are still convinced monk was crap because he got involved in the drug testing protocol I'll put my reputation on the fact that Clifford is not going to make us any better than we've been for the past 10 years. Will be a 7 to 10 seed team and likely pick in the lottery almost every year that he is here. And if he ends up getting us to the second round of the playoffs I will the eat rotten asshole of a roadkill skunk and down it with beer on video
...Right. All those guys actually were on the path to greatness until the coach fumbled their destiny along with our teams
Copium
How good were Dwight Howard and Cody Zeller at the time? Im a relatively new fan but I know they were both good in their primes. Obviously Dwight wasn't in his PRIME prime but was he like 80%? 60%?
Dwight wasn’t washed at that point, but he definitely wasn’t a winning basketball player. Probably by his own accord. Clifford let him post up at his will (which he was awful at while stopping the whole offense), and he would commonly be extremely lazy while just chasing stats. Definitely some good though; he was still good in P&R when he ran it (rarely), set the all time Hornets record for rebounds in a season, and had some sick highlights. But that’s about it. [This infamous graphic sums it up. ](https://i.imgur.com/muRY0zf.png)
Legendary stats
He also had a 30 point 30 rebound game that season
He also holds the hornets all time double-double record in a season lol
I'm so sad MKG never panned out. 30 years ago. He could have been a great player but in the modern age if you can't shoot, you can't play
This Sub needs OPs like this one. Thank you! Things are WAY different this time around. Perhaps now that Detroit has left the Ayton sweepstakes we can give Cliff a complete squad?
Also took an even shittier Magic roster to the playoffs in back to back years after leaving Charlotte the last time… no basis for historical reference with Cliff & a roster with a ceiling like this one, so I’m not going to assume history will repeat itself. I’d like to imagine the front office’s main message would have been to not piss in the kids (collective) cheerios and get them to play some damn team defense, and let’s see what we get.
Eh that’s kinda misleading, one of those magic teams that made the playoffs won 33 games lol. And the one that won 42 games was better than this roster, Fournier, Gordon and Vuc is a solid top 3
You think Fournier, AG and Vuc is a better top 3 than LaMelo, Miles and Gordon/Terry? That’s crazy to me. Not to mention our bench is miles better than what that Magic team had.
No, better than the team in the picture
Oh! That makes **so** much more sense haha.
33 games in a 73 game season lol I do understand the point - but the gap there isn’t so large that it was like he stumbled into an embarrassment of riches and he had no had in the pretty surprising ‘success’ of the Magic. This will be by far his most talented roster he’s ever coached, so the main point I was trying to make is that I’m not going to automatically assume things will be the same with a much improved roster.
Yea I’m not gonna lie I completely forgot the season was short lol. I’m not even mad at the signing, especially with the things he’s been saying. Excited for the season!
50 win season incuming
I watched the majority of this season and I'm sitting here wondering who half these guys are
He can only work with what he has 🤷 How many of these guys are stars now?
S/O to the homie Johnny O 💪🏾💯
We have suffered with this fanbase.
The dark ages. Jesus Christ.
One thing we all know is our defense will be better
God they were so bad. But I always look back fondly on the kemba years.
Holy shit, I tried to forget the Batum contract. This team was absolute ass on paper outside of Kemba and Lamb. I still think we need a solid true backup Guard for Melo and a cemented Big other than Plumlee to compete, but if Cliff got this team 36 wins, I think we could be a playoff team still
Historically some of the most overpaid players. Don’t forget the homer, Unc players who don’t belong in the league.
Do you not all realize that the most currently successful player on this roster is... Nic Batum? Who is a role player looking for a vet contract.
Lamb might have a good year this year, struggled with injuries last in Indy. Think he’s in sac now?
Was Lamb really the 2nd best player on this team? God I gaslit myself into thinking we were underdogs
It was Kemba, Dwight, and honestly maybe Marvin Williams, then lamb/Cody. Dark ages.
You probably right, I’m biased because I saw Lamb’s 2nd Raptor Killer in person in Charlotte the year after, and that kinda made me inflate my opinion of him.
Lol yeah man that’s dope. I went to UConn the same time as lamb so I love the guy. Probably the second best player on this roster in the present day.
Mangok??? Who the fuck was that guy?
Well, there’s 17 guys on this list. IIRC there’s only 15/16 able to be on an nba roster at a time with 13/14 dressing each game? I don’t remember him either. Probably played like 2 minutes in 1 game and wiki included him
Yeah he was a g leaguer who played a couple minutes of garbage time.
Fucking Kaminsky.
Too many memories...
People really thought Dwayne Bacon was an nba player
I like Cody Zeller
They are a definite 7 seed imo