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00:00 Let's move on to free agency. This should take a little bit less time.
00:02 The notable free agent signings in six years in Charlotte count as Kelly Oubre, Tony Parker,
00:11 who only came because James Borrego was here, more on that later, Gordon Haywood and Dennis Smith Jr.
00:18 Six years, went over the tax, had their mid-level exception pretty much available every single year
00:28 to spend, even had cap space at times, although they did end up using it up through some of those
00:32 trades, the Plumley deal and other things. They let Malik Monk walk away. They let Caleb Martin
00:40 walk away. A little bit revisionist history there, because Caleb Martin was not good in Charlotte,
00:45 and he said as much, he even said in an interview, I saw him once, he said, "I would have released me
00:49 too." So that's a little bit harsh maybe to put on the Hornets, but it's a fact nonetheless.
00:55 Never spent the money on the mid-level exception.
00:58 There's not a lot to discuss here. They basically just mailed in free agency for most of the time.
01:05 Do you have any thoughts on free agency?
01:10 I wish, but not really. The Hornets have never used the mid-level exception in the history of
01:18 the franchise. Still in 2024, all of these years that the backup point guard, the backup center
01:26 position could have been filled with someone who, hey, maybe they weren't worth 10, 11,
01:30 $12 million a year, but you could just sign them. So you had someone to put in that spot
01:35 on a reliable basis. And that never happened. Literally one time, Dennis Smith Jr., huge,
01:43 huge success. That one, you got to give him credit. But again, I think that has a lot more
01:48 to do with the player and the coach and the system they were in rather than the GM's vision
01:54 behind that signing and the motivation behind it. Because you look at what they did the next spring,
02:00 it was the exact same thing, or next off season, it was the exact same thing with Frank Neal-Akina,
02:04 who as much as I respect Frankie Nicotine, was terrible. Every time he played, he was never
02:10 effective. That very easily could have been Dennis Smith Jr. if Dennis Smith Jr. didn't have
02:15 tremendous amounts of dog in him to be able to pull his NBA career out of the gutter and
02:21 now is what seems to be a long-term rotation-ish player.
02:26 - But DSJ, the only reason he ended up in Charlotte is 'cause he's from North Carolina.
02:32 He went to college at NC State, right? He's from the area. And I think he worked out there over the
02:37 off season and he did pretty well in workouts. So they signed him to a non-guaranteed deal.
02:43 This is not Mitch Kupchak grinding G League draft film, seeing Dennis Smith Jr. and going,
02:49 "I think there's something there." It was like, "Oh, we've actually got an open back-up point
02:54 guard position. Come work out over the summer and, oh, you're actually doing all right. We'll come
02:59 and give you a chance." Again, I feel like Dennis Smith Jr. earned that rather than necessarily
03:06 Mitch Kupchak getting a huge ton of credit for it. And again, you're talking about a
03:13 borderline back-up point guard in the NBA. It's just not a big needle move. But the big
03:18 signings he made was Gordon Hayward, which was a complete disaster. We'll get onto that in detail
03:22 in part two of the podcast. And Kelly Oubre, who I think was a fine signing in Charlotte.
03:28 What we've all forgotten, by the way, and this is a similar... Remember those 24 hours when we
03:34 thought we were getting Larry Markkinen in that off season? Where it's Kelly Oubre and Larry
03:39 Markkinen, who was a restricted free agent at the time with the Cavs, were both lingering out there.
03:45 Charlotte were the only team with free agent cap space left. And there was literally... We all
03:51 thought Larry Markkinen was going to be the guy. And then they signed Kelly Oubre. And I may have
03:57 been quite excited about the Kelly Oubre signing. And I think the Kelly Oubre signing worked out
04:01 fine. But I mean, who knew Larry Markkinen on his second team after being in Chicago and in
04:07 Cleveland was going to turn into an NBA All-Star? And again, that could have so easily happened.
04:13 That was so close to happening. I don't even know if we'd have found his All-Star form if he'd come
04:19 to Charlotte. But I think he had a 50/50 chance between Markkinen and Oubre. Mitch Kupchak picked
04:25 Kelly Oubre. I also think you have to kind of... Again, we talk about the moves you didn't make.
04:31 That's also one you probably need to mark them down.
04:33 - Yeah, I definitely agree. And to be fair, they could have done both because they had
04:41 the mid-level exception available. And Kelly Oubre's contract, if I remember correctly,
04:45 was $12.4 million for two years with the second year only being half guaranteed.
04:51 That would have fit right into the mid-level exception, even in 2021, if I remember correctly.
04:57 And if not, I'm sure they could have maneuvered the salary within a couple million or $2 to work
05:02 that out if they wanted to. But obviously, making big swings and taking big risks and spending a
05:09 lot of money, particularly, was not the MO during the Mitch Kupchak regime. And free agency is the
05:18 area where that shows up. And we're seeing it now as we really have discussed everything that
05:25 they've done in what, like five minutes, maybe? We've already gone through every move, pretty much.
05:30 - And maybe you argue, well, this isn't Kupchak's fault, okay? He wasn't allowed to spend money in
05:35 free agency. But I mean, after he went and signed Gordon Hayward for $34 million and had to stretch
05:46 Nick Batum to make that happen, which essentially made the cap hit $40 million,
05:50 would you allow your GM to go out and sign more free agents after making that move?
05:54 We were talking before we went on air, his last two signs for the Lakers were Lawal Deng and
06:00 Timofey Mozgov. And he gave them huge contracts in the year of the cap spike, and they became two
06:06 of the worst contracts in the league. Mitch Kupchak's relationship with free agency is not
06:12 a successful one. So maybe it's a good thing they didn't do as much. But there is obviously an
06:18 element here of the Hornets weren't able to spend as much. You can't tell me that Mitch Kupchak
06:23 probably didn't want to use a mid-level exception at some point, and then someone's told him,
06:28 no, we can't do that. But I think you can maybe give him a little bit of forgiveness.
06:33 But even the moves that he did make were not wise. So with this one, I think Kelly Rowe was fine.
06:41 Tony Parker was good for the one year. DSJ was decent. Gordon Hayward was not good. I'm putting
06:48 us like a D minus, maybe an F plus. Or an E. Do you go D to F? How does the US grading system work?
06:56 Is there an E? No one ever gives Es. I never see Es. No, there is no E. I think F is for failure.
07:02 That's what it's for. You go from D to fail. Well, I'm going for D minus. He didn't quite fail
07:09 because maybe he wasn't allowed to spend money, but it was pretty bleak apart from that.
07:12 James, I think we just made podcast history. I'm giving them an F. And do you want to know why
07:20 to accentuate my point here? Yes. Through all of these years, and this is something that me and
07:27 maybe four other people that watch Charlotte Hornets basketball care about. And you're one
07:31 of them. So we can really say three people. The exhibit 10 signings that this team has made
07:37 in the last couple of years. Oh no. Just accentuate this perfectly. Every year,
07:43 there is one player that grew up in either North or South Carolina or Georgia, like literally dating
07:48 back to 2018. There's every single year, there's someone that went to high school there that they
07:53 got on an E10 or a two way or some sort of undrafted free agent contract. The team is just
07:59 not developed or was not developed in the way that 99% of other NBA franchises were.
08:08 Like the G League infrastructure that they were building for themselves was just completely
08:13 counteractive or counterproductive to this development environment that they were trying
08:18 to foster and that they spoke about every time that they went to the press conference table.
08:22 It just was not followed up on at all with these smaller fringe signings, which granted,
08:30 do not mean very much in the grand scheme of things. But if you really want to get into the
08:35 nitty gritty, which is what we're doing right here, this is the type of thing that good teams
08:40 care about consistently. And the Hornets did not. Are you telling me that JP McCurrah on the two way
08:48 didn't change the dial for you? Mangok Mathiang? The first two way signing in Charlotte Hornets
08:55 history, Mangok Mathiang. Yeah, no, I'm not much of a Jalen Barford guy myself either.
09:01 Robert Franks didn't do it for me. Have anyone ever jinxed Robert Franks on a podcast ever?
09:10 Have we? That is podcast history. That is the first time two people simultaneously said Robert
09:16 Franks. Yeah, I mean, the only guy really that has been like a successful signing for them in
09:21 that regard is Jalen Sims, who is currently on the Greensboro Swarm and is still a good player
09:27 in the G League and by all accounts is a guy that seems to have supporters in the organization. But
09:33 other than that, just straight whiffs, the swing and a miss every time pretty much with the exhibit
09:39 and you can I. But if you're an agent, would you send your player to Charlotte? No, no,
09:44 one, it's a terrible situation that you know that they're going to be not in five star hotels. We
09:50 talked about that before, right? So like, you're not going to have the the support staff and
09:55 everything that goes around that wraps around a player's development. That's not going to be there
10:00 in the same way like it is at the players. On top of that, there's a bunch of young drafted
10:04 players there. So you know, they're going to be getting that priority playing time in the G League
10:10 or in the NBA ahead of like your young guys. It's not like, you know, they're a team which is full
10:17 of vets and they're looking to develop one or two guys and two way contracts. And the reputation of
10:23 the franchises is just not good. Like they're going to go there and lose a lot. So when you've
10:27 got the choice between place X, Y and Z, you're going to go to the other two places unless there
10:34 are no options. So you're picking at the bottom of the pile. But that's part of the leadership's
10:39 responsibility is to change that, to change that relationship and culture and setting in the league.
10:44 And he failed to do that. Okay, let's move on to a couple of related topics here. Let's go front
10:54 office. Cap management. The one thing I will say, outside of signing Gordon Hayward, and the Nick
11:03 Stretch of Patoom, stretching of Nick Patoom, which was just some of the worst cap management,
11:08 the fact they didn't even make Hayward's contract a declining contract, just bewilders me. Outside
11:15 of that, the Hornets, because they've not spent any money, have generally had a lot of financial
11:20 flexibility over the years. They've not used that in the way that I would actually want them to,
11:25 by taking on bad contracts, which they've started to do this past deadline with Grant Williams,
11:31 who was viewed as maybe a negative asset at the time. They have these Bertons, Vesely Micic.
11:36 Like they've started to do that now, but for the last five years, that is not something that they've
11:40 been open to doing. But they've never been capped out without options to go like they were when
11:46 Cupcheck came in, Vesely, MKG, Williams, Patoom. So I think with cap management, I gave a B-minus
11:55 where they were always in a pretty flexible position, but I just, one, the Hayward signing,
12:02 and two, they just didn't use the flexibility in the ways that I would want them to. I would
12:06 rather have been inflexible to get more draft assets down the line. - Yeah, cap flexibility
12:13 means very little to me when you're not doing anything. Then it's not flexibility, it's just
12:19 space. - Sounds good at the press conference though, doesn't it? - Right. - It's just not
12:23 flexibility. - Right. It's literally just a buzzword, especially in the NBA where there's
12:29 a luxury tax and there's not a hard cap and you can really pick and choose just how much money
12:36 that you're spending as a team. There's zero value in not being in the luxury tax to me,
12:45 to at least a small degree. The way that the Hornets, and the Hornets have also never been
12:50 in the luxury tax in the history of the franchise or the history of the luxury tax, have never once
12:55 paid it. So this is another thing, the mid-level exception that you're just not using resources
13:00 at your disposal that almost every other team uses, and especially the good ones use year in
13:06 and year out. This is going to be a big part of the Gordon Hayward discussion too, is you just
13:13 have to spend money. You have to hit a certain salary floor. You have so much space between the
13:19 floor and the luxury tax. You don't gain anything from not using that, literally nothing. You don't
13:26 make extra money at the end of the year. The NBA doesn't come back and give you a $10 million
13:32 bonus and a gold star because you spent the least amount of money. Sure, you get the luxury tax
13:37 reimbursements and all that kind of stuff. But at a certain point, you're just putting yourself at a
13:42 competitive disadvantage. Again, that is what the Hornets have done year in and year out, is just
13:47 not really take advantage of this and maybe spend into the luxury tax, even for a team that maybe
13:55 doesn't deserve it. Oh my God, you're spending an extra $4 million or whatever on a team that
14:00 maybe finished in ninth instead of 10th. Teams do that all the time. The Hornets have never done it.
14:06 It's just one of those things that's like, it kind of just tells you who you are in a way.
14:13 I understand. The rebuttal I will offer against that is this is not a Charlotte-only issue, right?
14:21 If any of the franchise had been in Charlotte's position that they've been in over the past six
14:27 years, where they are in the standings and their expectations, I don't think any team is paying
14:32 the tax with the roster and expectations the Hornets have had. So that's where I'm comparing
14:38 them to their competition. Now, if the Hornets had had a top four team and they're not paid the tax,
14:44 then absolutely, I think you can make that criticism. But I just don't think that element
14:50 of it makes sense, in my opinion. But I do agree what you could have done is not been over the tax,
14:56 but you could have taken on some more bad contracts. So you maybe don't have the same
15:02 cap space that you've got the flexibility, but you'd like say you take on those draft assets.
15:06 So yeah, again, you've talked me now into wanting me to lower my grade here. Because apart from the
15:16 Hayward contract, and because it was the only one, there was a lot of flexibility on the roster
15:21 around that. But that was still pretty bad. I'm going to actually, I'm going to move my down.
15:25 I'm going to move on down to a C plus, I think here for cap management. Where are you landing?
15:30 Yeah, mine was a C minus. And I just looked this up too. So the 2021 season, the first year of the
15:39 Gordon Hayward contract, how much cap space do you think they had that year?
15:44 Well, they didn't have enough to sign in. Because that's why they had to stretch the tune.
15:49 So I want to say they had like 26, 28 million, something like that nature.
15:54 They will they okay, so this is what they what I should say is how much cap space do you think
15:58 they finished the year with that year, they finished the year with $2 million in space.
16:04 At the end of the year, they were not in that's why they weren't in the luxury. Like they didn't
16:10 pay at by the end of that year, that fiscal year, whatever it would be the NBA calendar,
16:15 they had $2 million in cap space. So like they and that was with Gordon Hayward at 28 and a half
16:21 million. Terry Rozier at 18.9. Cody Zeller at 15.4. Well, Mello was at 7.8. That was your next
16:27 highest player. Everybody else is that like a $5 million or less? rookie scale contract,
16:32 you had 123, you had six players making under $2 million that year. Like I'm not saying that that
16:39 is inherently a bad thing. But like, the difference between you being better, like is almost always
16:48 like spending more money in the NBA, like very, very, very rarely do teams that are like, at near
16:54 in like the bottom half of the salary cap table in the league end up being in like the top five or 10
17:00 teams left at the end of the year in the playoffs are making like deep playoff runs, you just need
17:05 to spend money and like acquire good players, whether that's via trade, like you said, like
17:10 taking on bad contracts and facilitating trades that way, or just signing players using the
17:15 mid level exception or overpaying a guy by like three or $4 million to get him to come to Charlotte
17:20 instead. Like, there's just a lot of ways to do that. And like, you could honestly argue they did
17:24 do that in some aspects with Gordon Hayward, or maybe with Kelly Oubre. But I just like not enough
17:30 for me, I guess would be the way to put it is and it's definitely like more like my own opinion
17:35 rather than like, a thing you can say is like cut and dry right or wrong. But I don't know,
17:40 that's that's just the way that I view like salary cap management in the NBA, I suppose,
17:44 and the Hornets are the very opposite of that, I guess. Yeah. And that's one thing I think to
17:50 look out for under this new ownership. If that's yes, for sure. It's already has honestly. Yeah,
17:57 taking on new salaries and all that.