The Charlotte Hornets could be in a position to trade down on draft night

The 2024 NBA Draft is shaping up to be an exciting one if for no reason other than there is no consensus on prospect rankings. Chase mentioned in his big board update that there’s little discernable difference in his top 18 prospects. Depending on your personal view of the class, that potentially makes this one of the rare NBA drafts where trading down might actually be beneficial. The Charlotte Hornets find themselves in a prime position to do that.

There are a few teams that are rumored to be interested in moving up. The Bulls, Grizzlies, Thunder, and Jazz are all reportedly considering trading up to land Donovan Clingan. Those four teams represent picks 9 through 12 in the draft. In that same ESPN article, they note that the Bulls (with the 11th pick) are also considering the merits of trading up to land Matas Buzelis, and it definitely has nothing to do with their Lithuanian GM wanting to land the Lithuanian prospect.

Normally, trading down is a bad idea. Ignacio Rissotto studied pasts draft night trades and found that outside of the Jayson Tatum/Markelle Fultz trade, the team trading up always landed the best player in the deal. If any draft was ever going to be an exception that rule, this is the one.

Although they have one of the lower picks of the aforementioned list of teams trying to move up, the Chicago Bulls or Utah Jazz might be the best trade partner for the Hornets. The Hornets could move back five spots and still potentially pick up a guy like Devin Carter. Typically that kind of trade requires the team moving up to also shell over a first round pick, and the Bulls are an ideal target for that kind of deal. The other two teams rumored to be in the market for a trade up, the Grizzlies and Thunder, are expected to be perennial playoff teams moving forward. The Thunder have a treasure trove of draft picks, but none of them stand out as particularly appealing or easy to move. The Grizzlies don’t own any other valuable picks. The Jazz are trying to ascend and probably aren’t keen on the idea of shelling out future assets.

So that leaves us with the Bulls first, who are one of the few remaining teams that you can definitively point to as a target to take advantage of. They seem content to land in purgatory and have a history of shelling out first round picks for quick fixes. That works against the Hornets a bit here, as they’re currently on the hook to send the Spurs a first round pick from the DeMar DeRozan trade in 2021. The soonest the Hornets would be able to get a pick from the Bulls is two years after that pick conveys to the Spurs. Still, by the time that happens, the Bulls probably will have a new front office and won’t be any good.

If the Hornets don’t find that palatable, their other good bet is the Jazz. The Jazz currently pick 10th and are in the midst of their own rebuild, but they have a surplus of picks from the Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert trades. The Timberwolves seem to have established themselves as at worst a good team going forward. However, the Jazz own unprotected picks from the Cavaliers in 2025 and 2027. The Hornets could bet on a Cavs implosion and add to their stockpile of 2027 picks or simply add one for next season.

Trading down in the NBA Draft is risky business, and the Hornets should only consider it if the board falls very particularly ahead of them. They either need to have already missed out on their top targets or feel very comfortable that one of those top targets is going to last until their pick.