DURHAM, N.C. — Brandon Miller is trying to finish his thoughts on the Charlotte Hornets training camp, but he keeps getting distracted. Every time someone walks by with something in their hands, he swipes at it, trying to send water bottles, shoes, whatever it may be, to the ground.
“Winning habits. Just creating good winning habits. I think that’s what everybody’s trying to create around here,” Miller said as he took another swipe at an unwitting teammate passing by. “I could have got that one. … The bonds here are great. It’s smiles all around.”
Each steal attempt is met with a laugh. Even as it disrupts staffers packing for the day, they know it’s a little bit more than the unbound fixation of a 21-year-old star in the making. It’s a manifestation of this franchise’s new identity: competitive joy.
“Of course. Of course. Of course. Pick the areas … let me get that!” Miller said as he tried to swipe some sneakers out of an equipment manager’s hands. “But I know that great defense is going to lead to great offense.”
Everyone is cool with it. They laugh. They know it’s part of the new defensive identity, an attempt to make a core change to the Hornets on the court now that everything is different off of it.
The Hornets have undergone a holistic makeover since Michael Jordan sold the team in August 2023. New governors Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin hired Jeff Peterson away from the Nets this April as president of basketball operations, who then tapped Charles Lee to replace Steve Clifford as head coach. Peterson and Lee, who both worked for the Atlanta Hawks while Schnall was a minority owner, have spent the offseason reframing how the Hornets operate.
Many players on the roster spent the summer in Charlotte, something 15-year veteran Taj Gibson called “rare in this league.” Instead of working out separately, they worked together this summer so they could be on the same page by the time training camp arrived.
“It’s gonna help us out in this long 82-game season,” Miller said. “Everyone getting in early, building the bonds now and getting connected early is going to help us know each other’s strengths and weaknesses throughout the season.”
They needed to get connected early because injuries ruined last season. But the injuries have continued as starting center Mark Williams has been out with a foot tendon strain since September, their best guard defender Josh Green has missed time after injuring his Achilles during the preseason and now Miller is out for at least a week with a left glute strain.
Now in his second season, Miller said he spent his summer learning how to be a vocal leader, so he can always make an impact. He spent most of his rookie campaign with LaMelo Ball sidelined, filling the void on offense and growing as a scorer as the season went on. But he and everyone else knows that if the Hornets want to start winning, the growth will have to come on the other side of the ball.
Fixing defensive woes
When Grant Williams arrived at the trade deadline in February, he saw a defense that struggled to keep up with convoluted offenses and one that gave up offensive rebounds after getting an early stop.
As the Hornets dealt with injuries all season, their defensive identity became lost.
“It starts with communication and multiple efforts. That’s something this team, I feel like in the past, has lacked,” Williams said. “They’ve been good on the first side of the ball, historically. But then the second side of the ball breaks down. For us, it’s just more so making those multiple efforts to protect one another.”
Lee has prioritized defense to the point that his players are asking to do defensive drills. When practicing help activity during shootarounds, Lee will have the rest of the players on the sideline mimic all the defensive shifts as well. Team defense means everyone on the team is defending, even if they aren’t in the game.
It’s all in support of what he calls the “most important guy” or “MIG.”
It doesn’t matter if you’re an offensive dynamo like Ball and Miller or a bench warmer. If you are guarding the ball, you’re the most important guy on the Hornets for that moment. You better take that responsibility seriously if you want to stay on the floor.
“MIG, ayyye!” Miller yelled toward his teammates as they shook their heads and chuckled. “We take pride on the defensive side this year. Putting in the new term MIG and now everybody’s getting acclimated with all the terms, it’s going to be a great season for us there.”
Traditionally, the MIG refers to the rim protector lurking in the weak-side corner, the player who swoops in to cover everything up while the perimeter defenders help each other out. In recent history, defenses focused on funneling the ball toward a desired area of the floor where a help defender will step in to disrupt the play.
“I just think that now people are trying to create so many more 3s and a lot of it starts with the ballhandler trying to get a piece of the paint,” Lee said. “Then I noticed over time that because teams are dialing up so many more 3s and drive-and-kick opportunities when they know that you have a bottom weak side guy, they’re drawing up (plays) to get him to come over.
“How do we take some of that away?”
This defensive focus is necessary for the whole team, but it’s also a recognition that their path forward will be likely determined by Ball’s health and willingness to expand his game.
Peterson said that while Lee is pushing the whole team, “It starts with Melo, defensively, just continuing to get better.”
On offense, Ball plays like he’s wearing headphones, moving to a rhythm only he can hear but somehow his teammates can understand. The question is whether he can play to their tempo and hold up on the other end of the court.
Ball said he spent the summer getting his body right and adjusting to playing in ankle braces. As much as defensive consistency is a matter of focus and drive, it’s also a byproduct of a player preserving his body when carrying such a big offensive responsibility.
“It’s been solid. Trying to work on defense, sliding, just defensive type of s—,” Ball said. “Keeping a body in front of everybody, it’s straight. Getting my body right.”
Lee said he wants to see Ball turn the joy he plays with into a “competitive joy” and to understand the effort he needs to show defensively and offensively daily.
“That’s what’s up. He likes competing, so gotta compete,” Ball said when asked about Lee’s statement.
Lee clarified he was not calling out Ball, and his star guard has been receptive to Lee’s feedback since he arrived. The coach made it a point to sit down with Ball and the player development staff before camp to create a plan for his improvement as a player, which starts away from the ball.
“Part of that is just going to be a little bit more focused on the defensive end,” Lee said. “I think that Melo is very focused on how can I improve my body, how can I improve my game? He was very open-minded. So I would say not critical and not calling out. More so just trying to identify some growth opportunities in his game.”
The pressure is on Ball more than ever to step up defensively because he is going to be the MIG often. Even if veteran Seth Curry or newcomer Green gets the primary guard assignment most nights, Ball’s point-of-attack physicality and off-ball awareness in the corners will be challenged throughout the game.
Offenses are becoming more adept at targeting defenders, and even if the Hornets put Ball on the wing away from the ball, the offense will find him and attempt to beat him off the dribble.
“Charles is pushing him and our whole team,” Peterson said. “But it starts with Melo, defensively, just continuing to get better and making positive strides there.”
Ball becoming a leader
Cody Martin has witnessed several iterations of the Hornets. He’s seen Ball enter as a rookie and become one of the most dazzling playmakers in the league.
But now, Martin is starting to see Ball embracing being more of a sponge as the leaders around him push him to prioritize defense.
“It’s a little bit more important to him right now and I think that he is realizing his capabilities on that end of the floor,” Martin said. “Because he’s so gifted offensively, I think that sometimes he can overlook the intangibles that he has on the defensive end.”
The Hornets have the offensive talent to mature into a cohesive group on both ends if it doesn’t want to have the worst net rating in the league once again.
“Sometimes you get so competitive that you get angry,” Peterson said. “This isn’t just LaMelo, but all of us, Charles included, me included, you get angry. It’s like, no, channel that into some joy. Adversity is gonna strike, right? So you just got to figure out how to get through it and I think just shifting your mindset into one that’s out of gratitude helps out.”
Ball is no longer the sole franchise cornerstone on this roster. Miller and Ball should be an ideal offensive pairing as they continue to develop and Miller’s emergence should allow Ball to be more pragmatic with his decision-making and shot selection.
But Miller has enough promise that he will give the team another path if things don’t work out with Ball long term. That could easily create division, but everyone from Miller to Peterson said Ball has been leaning into the partnership.
“I think he’s approaching it better than anybody else expects because he’s encouraged by it,” Grant Williams said. “It’s helping him take some weight off his shoulders because not only does he have a player like Brandon who has the capability of being an All-Star, but he’s got a bunch of guys around him that are capable as well.”
Roster analysis
In Peterson’s first offseason at the helm, he didn’t make any dramatic changes to the roster. After serving as assistant general manager in Brooklyn for the short-lived Kevin Durant–Kyrie Irving era, Peterson has seen what it takes to build and dismantle a contender.
Knowing the Hornets don’t have the free-agency pull of a city like New York, Peterson spent the offseason jumping into big deals as a facilitator to skim some value off the top.
He drafted Tidjane Salaün of France with the sixth overall pick, a long-term project with the upside to be the ideal complement to Ball and Miller. Then in July, he jumped into the first-ever six-team trade, receiving Dallas’ sixth man Green to help complete the Dallas Mavericks’ acquisition of Klay Thompson.
The Hornets helped break new ground in the second apron era, becoming the clearinghouse in the New York Knicks’ trade for Karl Anthony Towns trade in an innovative way. As reported by The Athletic’s Fred Katz, the Knicks found a loophole in the collective bargaining agreement to bypass restrictions aggregating minimum contracts by sending three players to Charlotte via sign-and-trade while paying them $1 over the minimum.
Peterson used Charlotte’s cap room exception as a trade exception, a new tool under the collective bargaining agreement, to take in the salaries and three second-round picks for their troubles.
“It was pretty neat to be a part of that,” Peterson said. “I think it’s a great tool now that the rest of the teams can use that going forward. It’s a nice little tweak that the CBA made.”
When a new ownership group comes in, they often will hire a new general manager and coach and overhaul the roster. While there has been some turnover since the start of last season, Peterson opted to keep cobbling together pieces to surround his core, rather than put his stamp on the locker room.
“That was part of the fun, part of the strategy getting here,” Peterson said. “I knew that when you’re going through this processing phase, you want to be as strategic and opportunistic as you can be.
“So if we find these little wins on the margins, it’s something that I’ve pushed our group on and our group has pushed me on to find value deals.”
Peterson said one of the main aspects that attracted him to the Hornets job was the cap sheet and asset pool. Ball, Miller and Mark Williams are all in their early 20s and Ball’s five-year extension is just kicking in. This is a team ripe for a build-up rather than a teardown with plenty of runway to improve over several seasons as they evaluate how much room Ball and Miller have to grow into franchise cornerstones.
But Williams, who has played just 62 games in his first two seasons, is still not playing due to a foot tendon strain.
“It’s been so long since I’ve been on the floor and every time I’m sitting and watching, it sucks,” Williams said. “I can’t wait to be back up.”
Salaün shows promise
Salaün, 19, has the makings of a two-way forward who can give the lineup flexibility, one day.
Peterson acknowledged that there were players drafted before and after Salaün as more NBA-ready, but they liked his work ethic and skill profile for his size. He’s shown flashes of promise in his first few games but gets frustrated sometimes when missing open looks.
So after a preseason loss in New York, Grant Williams sat down with Salaün for over 10 minutes to discuss mindset and roles with the team.
“I had Al Horford and he was phenomenal for me. Al did his work and he was competitive, but he was my vet even though I was vying for his job,” Williams said. “At the end of the day, that’s how this whole league works. No matter if he’s at my position or what’s going on, I want to support him and have the best career possible.”
That’s the element of winning culture the Hornets want to build this season. They have brought in enough talent to be successful down the road.
“It’s going to take some time. But at the same time, you don’t always have to wait,” Mark Williams said. “It’s as soon as you want it to be, just playing with effort, playing hard, communicating and just taking pride.”
The Hornets are 1-2 in this young season, and Lee is emphasizing communication, saying they need to grow from visual to verbal communication to have a reliable defense. The more they talk, the more they can spread that competitive joy.
“We want it to be known that whenever the opposing team comes to Charlotte, they know that we’re going at them,” Peterson said. “It’s going to be a tough, tough matchup.”
The Hornets have never struggled to have fun on the floor. Their test this season is to turn that into something that makes them a threat to win nightly.
“If you love this, you’re gonna have that competitive joy,” Ball said.
(Top photo of Brandon Miller and LaMelo Ball: Matt Kelley / Getty Images)
