Every team that wants to be good needs a player who is going to do all the dirty work on the defensive end of the floor. For the Charlotte Hornets, that player is 21-year-old Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, who officially signed a four-year deal to stay with the team for the foreseeable future.
Kidd-Gilchrist is still a bit of an enigma because of a number of issues. For one, what exactly is his ceiling on offense? Throughout his career, the forward has mostly been known for doing that very weird thing he does with his shooting elbow before he releases the ball and reasonably so. There’s also the fact that he hasn’t played more than 62 games in two consecutive years, which means he’s relatively prone to injury (at least to this point), and we still haven’t seen him quite consistently enough to properly evaluate how good he is or can become. His 10.9 points per game from last season was easily a career-best, and it’s fair to wonder if he has enough game to do much better in the years to come.
What isn’t an enigma is his presence on the floor and his notable defense. The forward ranked fourth among all small forwards in real plus-minus defense and is one of the harder players in the league to score against. The Hornets also have a record of 62-55 over the last two seasons with him on the floor versus 14-33 without him, and that’s a sample size too large to ignore.
Oh, and about that jump shot? It got better last year. No really. It did!
There’s plenty of room for improvement on both ends of the floor for the young forward, but even if he somehow fails to do so, the deal he signed ($52 million over four years) is worth every penny for what he already has to offer, assuming he can get over the injury issues. The salary cap is on the verge of increasing, and plenty of teams around the league are likely willing to fork up more than what Kidd-Gilchrist signed up for had he waited another year to test free agency. He is a critical piece for the Hornets moving forward, and he wasn’t shy about expressing how he felt about signing a deal with them on Wednesday:
I’m truly thankful for this opportunity. More than excited to spend these next 4 years here in the city of Charlotte. @hornets #BuzzCity
— Mike Kidd-Gilchrist (@MKG14) August 27, 2015
Jim Park is a blogger and editor of Sheridan Hoops. Follow him on twitter @SheridanBlog.