Grading all four Charlotte Hornets picks in the 2020 NBA draft
"The Charlotte Hornets took a leap forward with the picks in the 2020 NBA draft. Let’s grade their four picks.
Since the Charlotte Hornets traded Kemba Walker to the Boston Celtics they have been lacking star power. They have not had a player who can take over the game and drag the team to a win the way Walker could since he left.

It is not as though general manager Mike Kupchak made any significant deals on draft night. All he did was select players in the order that was allotted to him, with the exception of trading for the 42nd pick by giving up a 2024 second-round draft pick.

The Hornets ended up with four picks in the 2020 draft. Their first was pick No. 3. They then had two second-round picks before trading for the third. They have several holes in their roster, some of which were addressed with this draft.

Some of the areas the Charlotte Hornets needed to address with the draft.
While the Hornets guard play last season was dynamic with Terry Rozier and DeVonte’ Graham, they are undersized with both players standing only 6’1″. The Toronto Raptors have a similar-sized backcourt but both their players play above their size, the Hornets pair do not.

The next area the Hornets needed to address was their issues at center. While Cody Zeller is a solid worker, they need a rim protector as they gave up the highest field goal percentage in the NBA last season.

They also needed to address the fact that they were the lowest-scoring team in the league, averaging just 102.9 points per game. Despite all of these weaknesses the Hornets still managed to finish ninth in the East last season. Let’s now grade these picks."NBA Face Masks & NBA Face Covers

"Winning is done when a team sacrifices to reach a common goal. The LA Clippers have sacrificed from roster spots 1-through-15.

Coming to Orlando to win the franchise’s first championship ever was a decision made by the whole team. Winning a title would mean a new era for a team with a ruffled past.

Great players have suited up for the Clippers. Players have made the All-Star team. Also, they have received great honors. The team though has always been known for losing.

Los Angeles is legendary. Some of the greatest talents in the world have made a name for themselves in this town. Kawhi Leonard and Paul George are homegrown talents and need no introduction to the glamour and glitz of LA.

In this first-round matchup against the Dallas Mavericks, both players knew they had to be great. Both players needed each other to be great. Eventually, that was accomplished. The result?

The LA Clippers finally ending their first-round drought."Los Angeles Lakers Face Masks

Enes Kanter traded to the Portland Trail Blazers in three-team trade with Memphis Grizzlies
"The Boston Celtics finally completed their draft night trade with the Memphis Grizzlies, but with a twist. Boston will send Enes Kanter, who recently opted in for just over $5 million for the 2020-21 season, to the Portland Trail Blazers in a three-team deal.

The deal will also see Boston send the draft rights to Desmond Bane to Memphis. Bane was drafted with the 30th pick in the 2020 NBA Draft.

The Celtics will reportedly receive two future second round picks from Memphis. The Grizzlies will also acquire Mario Hezonja from Portland.

Kanter played one season in Boston and averaged 8.1 points and 7.4 rebounds per game. He played 16.9 minutes per game, mostly as a backup to Daniel Theis.

For his part, Kanter seems excited to be headed back to Portland:

In 23 games with the Trail Blazers at the end of the 2018-19 season, Kanter averaged 13.1 points and 8.6 rebounds. He then started for Portland during the 2019 playoffs after Jusuf Nurkic was injured.

Boston will create a trade exception of $4.767 million in this deal, as they are taking no salary back for Kanter.

This deal, combined with the recent opt out decision by Gordon Hayward, has Boston well below the luxury tax. That gives Boston plenty of wiggle room to use the full Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception of $9.258 million, as well as possibly the Bi-Annual Exception of $3.623 million.

In addition, the increased flexibility creates room for a potential sign and trade involving Gordon Hayward. That would allow the Celtics to take back additional salary in a deal. Or if Hayward re-signs in Boston, the Celtics could still have the ability to use the full MLE without worry of crossing over the hard cap.

Because this transaction between Boston, Memphis and Portland is taking place at the tail end of the 2019-20 league year, it is now official. Free agent negotiations open at 6:00 PM ET on Friday evening, and then the league year changes over on Sunday, November 21 at 12:01 PM ET."Washington Wizards Face Masks

The Boston Celtics (and 3 other teams) are having a bad start to free agency
"There’s been plenty of good and bad so far in NBA free agency, but the Boston Celtics and three other teams are off to terrible starts.
It’s the happiest time of the year in the NBA, and that fact is compounded with the combination of the draft and free agency in the same week. Of course, if it’s not a happy time, it’s the absolute worst time, and for a handful of teams (led by the Boston Celtics), it’s been downright awful.

Let’s take a look at just why the Celtics have had a terrible time so far, and then we’ll go on to a few other teams having just as bad of a time.

Why the Boston Celtics are having a miserable free agency
The Boston Celtics always seem to be on the verge of making a big deal for a star, only to decide they’re fine without a blockbuster trade and come up just short in the end. Over the last couple of seasons, it’s even worse than that. Not only have the Celtics been unable to swing a big deal for a star or two, they’ve been losing their own.

Last season they lost Kyrie Irving in free agency, receiving nothing in return. While considering how poorly the relationship was by the end of Irving’s time in Boston, it’s fair to say that getting him out of the locker room was a win by itself, but it’s still a poor result for a max-level player.

This time around, they lost Gordon Hayward also for nothing. He opted out of his $34 million 2020-21 salary, and while he and the team were apparently working to find a sign-and-trade in order to maximize him as an asset, he ended up departing to the Charlotte Hornets and signing a gigantic four-year, $120 million deal.

That contract is certainly an overpay and not something the Celtics should have tried to match, but losing top-end players and replacing them with nothing so far isn’t the best way to get back to the Eastern Conference Finals.

Maybe the Celtics will turn it around, but so far they’re one of our headlining teams for Bad Times During Free Agency."

"Almost one calendar year after the 2019-20 NBA season began, the NBA Finals are about to begin between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat. It’s been a long, grinding, tumultuous season with the deaths of Kobe Bryant and former commissioner David Stern, and an all-time footnote in the form of a four-and-a-half month hiatus brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.

The NBA had to get creative to even consider resuming its season, and it did indeed think outside the box in order to do so. As we know now, the league created a bubble environment in Walt Disney World’s Wide World of Sports, and thanks to vigorous testing and quarantining had a perfect record with no positive tests on campus.

The league pulled off something that seemed impossible back in the middle of March when they suspended the season, and along the way provided some incredible basketball. The Phoenix Suns were the seeding game champions with a perfect 8-0 record but were eliminated from playoff contention in the final game of the round.

Performances by Jamal Murray and Donovan Mitchell in a seven-game first-round battle between the Denver Nuggets and the Utah Jazz were nothing short of spectacular, and the Miami Heat’s stifling zone defense clamped down on the Milwaukee Bucks and the Boston Celtics en route to the Finals, while Anthony Davis had a fantastic scoring run for the Lakers.

Not to be left unmentioned, LeBron James had a vintage Game 5 against the Denver Nuggets to clinch things, reminding us that there’s still nobody like LeBron when he has a team on the ropes in the NBA playoffs.

The Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat are not the matchup we expected when the season began, or even when the seeding games or the playoffs began. The Lakers were never worse than the second-most likely team from the Western Conference to get here, but the Heat astonished everybody to get to the Finals."