Writing about rookies has a perilous downside: it usually requires writing about bad teams.
That’s what makes Chet Holmgren (and writing about him) so fun. He has the ability and the opportunity to contribute to winning basketball, while most rookies are either too raw to do so or have the misfortune of being drafted to a rebuilding team.
Unfortunately for Brandon Miller, he suffers from the latter affliction. Despite picking in the lottery for the past seven years and in 12 of the last 13 drafts going back to the Bobcats days, Charlotte has never produced consistent winning basketball.
That’s a tough environment for rookies to enter, hence why many Charlotte draftees have busted. Sure, Charlotte’s front office probably hasn’t been home to the league’s best evaluators over the years, but it’s also harder for rookies to develop without a competitive roster around them. Malik Monk, for example, Charlotte’s choice at the No. 11 pick in 2017, has averaged more points per game and a higher field goal percentage in all three seasons since he left the Hornets than the four years he spent with them.
But with Miller and LaMelo Ball, Charlotte has a chance to buck this trend. They’ll have to do it quickly, though. In the league’s player empowerment era, Ball might not have much more patience for losing basketball, despite just signing his five-year max extension this past summer.
Fortunately for the Hornets, Miller entered the league with an NBA-ready playing style, and it has translated as expected.
In early big boards for the 2023 draft, many prognosticators had Scoot Henderson ahead of Miller in the No. 2 overall position, but Miller wowed scouts with his rangy defense and shot creation at Alabama. He shot 38.4% from three as a freshman with an estimated seven-foot wingspan, although he didn’t attend the combine for an official measurement. In a league dominated by wings like Jayson Tatum and Kawhi Leonard, Miller’s size and skillset screamed All-Star potential. He even idolizes Paul George, a further indication of how much he epitomizes the modern NBA.
Miller sits in third among rookies in points per game with 15.1, behind only Victor Wembanyama and the aforementioned Holmgren, while shooting 43.5% from the field. The Hornets would surely like to see Miller improve his midrange shot in the coming seasons, but his accuracy from distance has been as good as advertised at 37.8%.
Like many rookies before him, Miller’s night-in, night-out performances have been all over the place. He’s had seven single-digit-scoring performances and five games where’s shot under 30%, some of which, unsurprisingly, overlap. But there have been recent signs that Miller is figuring out what it means to be a reliable nightly scorer.
For the first time this season, Miller scored 20-plus points in four consecutive games in January. Against the Spurs, Sixers, Timberwolves and Pistons, Miller posted 24, 23, 27 and 23 points, respectively. It’s particularly impressive that his highest total in that stretch came against the T’wolves, who own the league’s second-best record (as of Tues., Jan. 30) and rank first in opponent points per game (107.4) ahead of the hard-nosed New York Knicks, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Boston Celtics. Admittedly, Miller followed that four-game stretch with a pair of five and 12-point stinkers, but even then he bounced back with another 29 points against the Knicks.
This scoring stretch has given us some great highlights to analyze, including this sequence from the recent Knicks matchup:
Under head coach Tom Thibodeau, the Knicks have been a stout defensive team that relies on physical defense from smaller players, including the 6-foot-5 Quentin Grimes, who faces a mismatch against Miller in this clip. With Miller having the size advantage, Grimes tries to battle Miller physically and make it hard for the Hornet to reach his spot. Despite Grimes’ shoulder-to-shoulder contact, Miller never wavers through his move and still sinks his jumper as he bumps up against Grimes chest, drawing the and-one. That ability to finish through contact is crucial for Miller at this stage in his career, considering he’s still pretty thin.
Miller can use his shooting threat to play make for others, too. From his Jan. 22 game against the Timberwolves, Miller expertly reads his opponents’ zone defense to take advantage of the space he created.
Once Ball passes the ball to Miller to initiate the play, Shake Milton steps up to harass Miller. The Hornets rookie then lightly pump fakes—barely bringing the ball up an inch into his shooting motion—so that Milton jumps, then dribbles towards the hoop.
Recognizing Miller’s threat, three-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert shifts from the right corner, where he was guarding the Hornets’ JT Thor, to shut down Miller’s chance of going to the rim. Realizing that Milton is chasing him and Gobert has left his man, Miller kicks the ball out to Thor, who nails the corner three. Miller has averaged an unexceptional 2.3 assists per game this season, but as long as he can leverage his shot to make a timely pass, he doesn’t need to be a LeBron James-level passing forward.
The former Alabama star is on an exciting trajectory early in his NBA career, and if he catches fire in the final months of the season, we may see a dark horse campaign Rookie of the Year.