CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The whereabouts of the Charlotte Hornets general manager on Friday afternoon perfectly underscored the franchise’s current situation after the NBA trade deadline passed 24 hours earlier.
Mitch Kupchak found himself in a foreign country, all to ensure he gets an up-close look at some premium talent. Although evidence suggested he was abroad scouting Victor Wembanyama — the wunderkind expected to be selected No. 1 overall in the draft in June — in game action, Kupchak wouldn’t confirm the suspicion.
“No, I can’t say that, but can say I’m in Paris,” Kupchak said. “And just so you know, I’m not looking at beautiful Paris. I’m in the Sheraton at the airport looking at an Air France plane on a runway (from) my hotel room.”
Kupchak hopped on an overnight flight shortly after the completion of a pair of trades. He sent Jalen McDaniels and a 2024 second-round to Philadelphia in a four-team deal that landed the Hornets the 76ers’ 2023 second-round draft pick, a 2027 second-round draft pick from Portland and forward Svi Mykhailiuk from New York.
That preceded Kupchak shipping Mason Plumlee to the LA Clippers for Reggie Jackson, a 2028 second-round pick and cash considerations. Plumlee and McDaniels weren’t in the Hornets’ long-term plans and Kupchak decided it was best to acquire an asset in exchange now rather than get nothing if they left for elsewhere in a few months.
“Well, there was a lot in motion,” Kupchak said. “Both players that were traded were going to be unrestricted free agents in the summer. So, that’s something to be considered. You don’t know what their value is going to be. They are both having great years. You don’t know what the market is going to look like (and) we have a bunch of other players that are also going to be free agents.
“So, something I’ve learned is you can’t pay everybody and these are hard decisions, especially Jalen.”
McDaniels’ production increased with the added minutes he picked up courtesy of the Hornets’ rash of injuries, and he might have priced himself out of the range Charlotte was comfortable slotting him into. PJ Washington’s impending free agency status, along with Kelly Oubre’s and even Nick Richards’ impacted the decision to send McDaniels to another locale.
Washington is going to be a restricted free agent in July and the Hornets want to re-sign him. Oubre doesn’t want to go anywhere, and Kupchak indicated their intention is to bring him back, too. Re-signing Richards is also on the radar.
Tying up precious salary cap space that might hamper the Hornets moving forward is not on the agenda.
“When I got to Charlotte, we had, I don’t know, four or five contracts that all went out three or four years,” Kupchak said. “And made it difficult for us to navigate and get through the first two or three years and kind of wean ourselves away from those contracts. We’ve got to be careful that we don’t put ourselves in that same situation.
“Is Jalen a starter if Gordon (Hayward) comes back and we are looking at a very attractive draft pick?”
As one of the teams with ample projected available cap space when the league’s new fiscal year begins in a little less than five months, the Hornets can’t afford any slip ups with their finances. They don’t have the leisure of absorbing bad contracts in similar fashion to some of the larger market teams unfazed by the league’s luxury tax.
So, staying out of the red is imperative because it will allow them to be in position to better reshape the roster, smooth over its current flaws and build around star point guard LaMelo Ball.
“We are in a good spot financially,” Kupchak said. “We haven’t put ourselves in a situation where we are kind of locked in. If you are locked in, you want to be locked in with players that you are 100 percent about. In the offseason, on paper, we are projected to have cap room.. … I think I’ve said it a bunch of times: I don’t look at our team as a team that hordes cap room so that we can go into the free agent market and pursue free agents.
“We did that a couple of years ago and we ended up landing a big free agent. But I don’t think that is something we can bank on as a small market team. I just don’t.”
Instead, the Hornets intend on building the roster up through the three areas that have become a staple since Kupchak’s arrival at the helm in 2018.
“The way we are going to get better is through the draft and player development, and then if we get lucky make a couple of savvy trades,” Kupchak said. “Every now and then, you might be able to get into the free agency market and get a player. And I’m hopeful that down the road a little bit we can become a very attractive team, even for a small market, and maybe we can get a big fish. But right now, I don’t think that’s how we have to look at it.”
Kupchak also addressed some other topics. Among them:
Miles Bridges’ status
Nothing remains imminent with Miles Bridges, but Kupchak acknowledged the NBA is currently examining Bridges’ case. The Charlotte Observer has reported there’s interest on both sides to eventually have a reunion once the league’s probe is complete, although there is no definitive timetable as to when that will happen.
In November, Bridges pled no contest to a felony count of injuring a child’s parent, agreeing to a three-year probation period with no jail time. As a condition of the deal, he has to attend 52 weeks of parenting classes and domestic violence counseling, plus complete 100 hours of community service.
“I can’t really get into the Miles Bridges’ situation,” Kupchak said. “Listen, Miles pleaded in October and everybody knows what happened. The NBA is conducting an investigation. I don’t know when the investigation is going to end. When the investigation ends, we will have more information and we’ll go from there.”
Hayward and Rozier rumors
According to Kupchak, the Hornets were not actively attempting to send their two highest-paid players anywhere. While he totally didn’t dispute the names of Hayward and Terry Rozier arose in discussions, he made it known the Hornets’ game plan didn’t involve moving either of those two.
“It’s never that clear cut that you decide to stick with a group of players,” Kupchak said. “You always listen. And obviously, I’m not going to speculate and share information about teams that may have or may not have called about those two players.
“But we knew pretty much leading up to the trade deadline — and there’s always a surprise or two an hour or two before the trade deadline — but we knew pretty much leading up to it that was not the direction we were going to go.”
The reasoning? It goes back to their string of unimaginable bad luck with injuries. The Hornets have a total of 163 games lost due to them, which ranks sixth in the league, and pushing the panic button because they’re torpedoing toward one of the league’s worst records didn’t register on Kupchak’s radar.
He wasn’t overly interested in doing any major roster restructuring at the moment.
“We’ve got to be careful not to assume that what happened this year is a fair representation of what this team really is,” Kupchak said. “If we were healthy this season relatively, and our team was intact, and we had the season that we are having right now, then it’s something that maybe you’ve got to make a big move, I didn’t feel, we didn’t feel, that the way this season played out to date that this season was something we had to react quickly on.
“Sometimes — not always — you’ve got to be a little patient and let things play out.”
