With the 2026-27 NBA season getting closer, the Charlotte Hornets look mostly built out, even if President of Basketball Operations Jeff Peterson and the front office still have room to make smaller moves. The bigger issue is what the roster already is: there are still a few obvious holes, and some of them were sharpened by the decisions Charlotte made this summer.
The first one is hard to miss. Moving away from LaMelo Ball immediately stripped away a major chunk of playmaking and lead-guard creation, and that loss affects the entire guard rotation. Ball was one of the NBA’s premier playmakers last season and the engine behind Charlotte’s offense on a nightly basis.
Coby White gives the Hornets a real starting point guard. He has spent seven NBA seasons showing he can run an offense and create advantages, and he does a good job getting into the paint and forcing defenses to react. Put him with Brandon Miller and Kon Knueppel, and Charlotte has enough secondary creation, shooting and scoring to make the starting group dangerous on offense.
The problem shows up when White sits.
At the moment, the backup initiation job looks like a battle among rookie Christian Anderson, Tre Mann, Sion James and maybe Grayson Allen. None of those options really screams “ideal answer” for a team trying to win now.
Anderson’s Summer League made the developmental curve pretty clear. He looks like a perimeter-oriented guard whose best work comes as a shooter, both off the catch and off the dribble, and that part should translate.
But across those four games, he had trouble creating space with the dribble, getting into the paint or consistently threatening the rim. He also looked very slight and, at times, overmatched by ball pressure while scoring inefficiently.
Throwing him straight into backup point guard duties to open the season would not be best for Charlotte or for its first-round pick.
Mann is a different kind of bet. He can separate off the bounce and has real offensive juice when things are rolling, but the numbers from last season were rough on both ends. Even if the back disc irritation that limited him for much of the 2024-25 season is behind him, and even if a healthy offseason helps, banking on a big leap feels risky.
James and Allen can help the second unit, but not in the exact way Charlotte needs most. Allen has been one of the league’s best shooters and floor spacers over the past five seasons, and he also posted a 20.6% assist percentage last season while carrying a fairly heavy offensive load for a wing with the Phoenix Suns.
That matters. So does the fact that he is best as a secondary creator and a closeout attacker, not the guy starting the offense from scratch.
James fits a similar mold. He can make life easier for others, but he is most effective when somebody else is already bending the defense. Neither player solves the Hornets’ need for a true lead creator behind White.
That shortage matters because Charlotte already has a bigger structural issue on offense: too much of the roster lives on the perimeter and not enough of it gets to the rim. Last season, the Hornets ranked in the bottom two in the NBA in two-point field goal frequency, two-point field goals made and two-point field goals attempted.
They also finished in the bottom 10 in two-point field goal percentage. There is not much reason to expect a major jump there.
Outside of White, almost every projected rotation guard and wing has trouble consistently getting downhill and finishing efficiently. Miller and Knueppel are elite movement shooters and can work the mid-range, but both still need to grow in terms of attacking downhill and drawing fouls. The rest of the group - Anderson, Allen, James, Mann, Liam McNeeley and Royce O'Neale - is made up mostly of shooters or players who do not generate enough rim pressure to lift Charlotte out of the league’s lower tier in two-point scoring.
The roster change from Miles Bridges to Naz Reid only reinforces that point. Bridges was Charlotte’s best forward at getting to the cup on a nightly basis, and Reid does bring a driving element, but the force he creates in the paint is clearly different from Bridges’.
With Charles Lee’s preferred style and this personnel mix, the Hornets are still likely to lean heavily on perimeter shooting. There just isn’t enough downhill creation or paint-touch generation to give the offense the balance it needs.
The other major concern is defense, even though Charlotte finished last season in the top 12 in defensive rating and around the top 10 in defensive efficiency. On paper, this roster still lacks defensive talent, especially when it comes to guarding the ball.
Miller is once again projected to be the team’s main perimeter stopper, and that asks a lot from someone already carrying a huge offensive burden. White and Knueppel profile as neutral to below-average defenders for their positions. Anderson, Allen, Mann and McNeeley are all names smart offenses will try to target.
James stands out as the guard who can actually defend the ball well at the point of attack. He did a strong job last season guarding positions one through three and often drew the opponent’s top creators. But the overall guard group still doesn’t have enough defensive playmakers.
Up front, Moussa Diabaté and Ryan Kalkbrenner have both shown they can be positive defenders in their own coverages. Reid and Hannes Steinbach also have enough mobility to survive on the perimeter when paired with a defensive-impact center like Diabaté, though neither is a plus defender on his own.
Could Lee and his staff still build another above-average defense from this group? Maybe. But it would take a lot, and it would be a real accomplishment given the roster’s current defensive makeup.