Hornets Roll Out Chaotic New Starting Lineup Against Hawks
Underdog NBA reported the lineup alert on Friday.
The are rolling out a starting five on Friday that looks like a random name generator broke down in the front office. According to Underdog NBA, Dennis Schroder, Sion James, Brandon Miller, Naz Reid, and Moussa Diabate are taking the floor together against the Atlanta Hawks.
If you are staring at a sportsbook trying to figure out how to handicap this exact five-man unit, you might want to just close the app and go for a walk. This is the kind of rotation that screams a coaching staff is throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.
Charlotte is desperately searching for answers after a miserable week. They took a 116-98 beating from the Memphis Grizzlies and followed it up with a 110-103 loss to the Brooklyn Nets. When you are dropping games and searching for an identity, you throw the rotation in a blender and see what pours out.
The silver lining here is Brandon Miller. After a wrist injury completely derailed his sophomore season and limited him to just 27 games, seeing him healthy and anchoring the wing is the only thing keeping fans from fully checking out before Halloween.
Pairing Miller with Schroder is an interesting theoretical fit. Schroder is coming off a season where he averaged 19.5 points and 7.8 assists per 36 minutes, meaning he can at least steer this chaotic ship.
Throwing Reid into the frontcourt for floor-spacing and using Diabate as the defensive anchor makes this a true wild-card unit. They will either run Atlanta out of the gym or give up a massive run in the first four minutes.
We will find out exactly what this group looks like under the lights on Friday night. If this experiment blows up in their faces, expect the coaching staff to shuffle the deck again before the come to town on Saturday.