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| Kemba Walker and Lance Stephenson (Matt Gorry, hornets.com) |
“Love Indiana, I’ma miss them good days/
In an offseason that saw the world’s best player explain and announce his free agency decision in a self-penned Sports Illustrated column, Lance Stephenson expressed his rationale in signing with the Charlotte Hornets on wax (metaphorically speaking, guess it’s more like “on Cloud” now.)
It was surprising to see Lance leave the Indiana Pacers as a free agent this summer. Drafted in the second round of the 2010 Draft, he came out of the University of Cincinnati with the talent and potential of a superstar, but in a raw and volatile package that was finally beginning to be realized in Indiana.
Stephenson dominated both the playgrounds and the high school circuit in his days growing up in Coney Island, NY and finished his HS career as NY’s all-time leading scorer. He dealt with celebrity at an early age, filming a “Born Ready” reality show in his sophomore and junior seasons, and playing guard for the same Lincoln High School that previously graduated Sebastian Telfair and Stephon Marbury. He led the school to a record-four consecutive championships and was named New York’s Mr. Basketball after his senior season, but issues both on- and off-the-court contributed to his struggles in fielding scholarship offers.
Lance was the last of ESPN’s Top 100 high school recruits to commit to a college, eventually choosing the University of Cincinnati over Memphis, and after schools like Kansas and St. John’s rescinded their scholarships. Rumors about his overbearing father and potential involvement with agents scared some programs off, along with concerns over his attitude and selfishness on the court, which caused him to get cut from the United States Under-18 team despite being the team’s leading scorer. Questions about his NCAA eligibility because of the TV series and a visit to the Under Armour factory while visiting the University of Maryland would ultimately end up being more NCAA drama but served to scare some coaches away. The off-court, legal issues were another, more serious, issue, though.
Lance and a teammate on the Lincoln High basketball team were arrested and charged with a Class B misdemeanor for sexual assault in October of 2008. The victim, a 17-year old student, claimed that the two men groped her during school hours, which she reported to the police three days later. The two faced up to six months in jail, but Lance pled guilty to a lesser charge for disorderly conduct and was ordered to perform three days of community service and undergo counseling.
During that time, Memphis head coach John Calipari jumped to Kentucky and recruit Xavier Henry withdrew his commitment, taking Lance’s spot at Kansas. His hometown school, St. John’s University, also withdrew their scholarship after the sexual assault charges, and Stephenson committed to the University of Cincinnati and head coach Mick Cronin, who had recruited Lincoln-alum Sebastian Telfair to Louisville before he entered the 2004 NBA Draft.
Lance might have just jumped to the NBA in 2009 and avoided all of the NCAA consternation, had the league allowed it. Instead he served his customary one-and-done season with the Bearcats, was named the Big East Freshman of the Year, and displayed his familiar all-around game - leading the team in scoring, field goal/free throw attempts, and turnovers, and finishing second in rebounds, assists, and steals. He struggled with his jump shot, shooting just 21.9% on threes, and relied on strength to get to the basket over athleticism. Questionable shot selection and attitude issues followed him to the collegiate game, and a tendency to check out when he wasn’t involved in the play didn’t help his reputation as a selfish player.
The personality issues were a major red flag entering the 2010 Draft for Stephenson, and in Chad Ford’s final mock draft he had Lance as a second-round pick, with first-round talent but a “questionable attitude.” He would indeed go in the second round, but to the Indiana Pacers with the 40th overall pick. The Pacers under President of Basketball Operations Larry Bird were quite risk-averse at the time, and still working to clean up the franchise’s image after the Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson era of the mid-2000’s. Coming off of recent drafts that saw him target seasoned college players like Roy Hibbert and Tyler Hansbrough, Bird diverted from that strategy by drafting Paul George and Stephenson in 2010. Both players would eventually pan out spectacularly, as All-Star-caliber wings a couple of seasons later, but Lance immediately proved why it was such a risky move for Bird.
Within months of being drafted by the Pacers, Stephenson was arrested for pushing his girlfriend and baby’s mother down the steps of their Brooklyn home. He then allegedly slammed her head against the bottom step before telling the arriving police that “she fell down the stairs.” He was charged with felony second-degree assault and a number of misdemeanors for harassment, menacing, and weapons possession, before they were later dismissed by authorities in 2011. Larry Bird, who reached out as a mentor to Stephenson upon drafting him, released a statement and called the arrest “very disappointing to the Pacers franchise and to me personally.”
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| all shot charts courtesy of nyloncalculus.com |
Stephenson kept his roster spot, but only played 115 total minutes in his rookie season and 442 in Year Two. His only footprints on the NBA landscape at the time consisted of an ill-advised choke sign he made at LeBron James during free throws in Game 3 of the 2012 Eastern Conference Semi-Finals. Even his first coach in the NBA, Jim O’Brien, wouldn’t talk to Jonathan Abrams about Lance.
It was in his third season in the NBA that Lance Stephenson would finally see sustained minutes. In the wake of leading-scorer Danny Granger’s left knee injury Lance would start 72 games and average under 30 minutes a contest as the starting shooting guard, scoring 8.8 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 2.9 assists per game, and moving breakout-star Paul George to Granger’s small forward spot. The Pacers finished with the third seed in the 2013 Eastern Conference playoffs and led the league in defensive rating (points allowed per 100 possessions), but fell from 7th in offensive rating to 20th without Granger. Stephenson made strides shooting the ball, but would submit his finest season of his four-year career in 2013-14.
The ’13-14 Indiana Pacers submitted one of the weirdest seasons in NBA history, with Lance playing a major role, for better or worse. The Pacers were perhaps the league’s best team entering the All-Star break, with a 40-12 record and a defensive rating under 94 points/100. The offense would never be dominant under head coach Frank Vogel, and after Granger’s injury, but the ball was moving on offense, Paul George was playing like a legitimate MVP candidate, and Lance had a serious All-Star beef.
Stephenson had an effective overall season and responded to the increased minutes and responsibilities on offense. He missed four games but increased his stats across the board, averaging 13.8 points, 7.2 rebounds, 4.6 assists, and 2.7 turnovers on 35.3 minutes per game in 2013-14, shooting 54.5% on 3.1 two-point field goal attempts per game, 35.2% on 3.1 3PA’s, and 71.1% on 2.5 FTA’s. He kind of had a point about making the All-Star team…
Then things fell apart, internally. The Pacers’ 18th-ranked offense pre-All-Star break was even worse in the second “half” of the season, posting the 2nd-worst mark down the stretch, at 100.2 points per 100 possessions. The defense still finished first in defensive rating on the season, but it also slipped to 7th-best after the All-Star game and the team was actually outscored by 2.2 points per in the 30 games post-ASG. Paul George struggled shooting the ball in the half-court, Lance fumed after failing to make the All-Star team, and Roy Hibbert posted three games in April and May with zero points and zero rebounds.
The stories that leaked from the Pacers locker room heading into the playoffs were ugly, complete with tales of fights in practice, players separated on the bench, and general rants about “selfish dudes” . The common scapegoat seemed to be “The 8th Grader”, Lance Stephenson. Suddenly all of Lance’s idiosyncrasies were blamed for bad chemistry; that his usual selfish, stat-stuffing tactics of yelling at scorers tables and stealing rebounds from teammates went from endearing to annoying real quick. His attempted trolling of LeBron James in the Eastern Conference Finals failed, only seeming to antagonize Larry Bird instead.
Despite the blame game and lackluster team play that sabotaged the second half of the season, the Pacers still reached the Eastern Conference Finals and took the reigning champion-Miami Heat to six games. The series wasn’t as competitive as the year prior, and the shaky performances in the seven-game Atlanta Hawks series and Game 1 of the Semi-Finals against the Washington Wizards added to the general disappointment heading into the offseason. Sitting only about $10 million under the restrictive luxury tax threshold, Larry Bird entered free agency with limited room to upgrade the roster and an interesting decision to make in Lance Stephenson’s contract negotiations.
All indications were that Lance would eventually return to the Pacers in free agency, due mostly to his relationship with Larry Bird and the teams’ need for offensive weapons, but early signings of Rodney Stuckey, C.J. Miles, and international forward Damjan Rudez ate into some of that limited-cap space. Rumors emanated that he turned down a five-year, $44 million dollar deal ($8.8 million average annual value) after seeing some of the contracts given to other 2-guards (Jodie Meeks and Avery Bradley, take a bow!). Bird would reportedly alter his offer to Lance as the free agency period progressed but on July 18th, Stephenson signed a three-year, $27.4 million deal ($9.1 million AAV) with the Charlotte Hornets.
The particulars of the contract, particularly the third-year option, seemed a little strange, and it seemed as if there were some personal feelings involved in leaving Indiana. Assuming Lance turned down the Pacers' original five-year offer, the difference in AAV’s between the two deals were only a couple of hundred thousand dollars per season, with the third and final year in Charlotte coming as a team option. Given the upcoming television rights negotiations that could impact the NBA’s ledgers and increase the cap significantly, Lance wasn’t the only free agent to sign for short-years with an eye on re-entering free agency, but taking a team option is a major concession to the organization. Given Larry Bird’s quotes after the signing, concerning his disappointment in losing Lance, maybe he would have caved and given Lance a player option to hit the market again after the first two years.
Instead, Lance’ll make ‘em dance for the up-and-coming Charlotte Hornets franchise in 2014-15. The former-Bobcats improved their 2013-14 win total by 22 victories from the previous season, finishing 24th in offense and 5th on defense under first-year head coach Steve Clifford. A year before investing in Lance in free agency, General Manager Rich Cho used the summer of 2013 to sign the underrated Al Jefferson to a three-year deal (for $40.5 million) to team with the young lottery picks that constituted the foundation of the franchise (Kemba Walker, #9 in the 2011 NBA Draft; Gerald Henderson, #12 in 2009; Michael Kidd-Gilchrist #2 in 2012; Cody Zeller #4 in 2013). The additions of Clifford and “Big” Al to that core propelled the team to the 7th-seed in the Eastern Conference and a much-improved defense, but Jefferson suffered an injury in Game 1 and the team was swept by the Miami Heat.
The team lost not only the Bobcats moniker in the offseason but also starting power forward Josh McRoberts (to the Heat), opening up starting spots at potentially the forward and wing positions. The playoff series might have exposed Gerald Henderson as a bench player, as he posted an offensive rating above 90 only once in the four games (Game 2, with 111), and Kidd-Gilchrist again struggled on offense and with his jump shot, shooting below 31% on all shots beyond three feet of the basket.
Outside of Kemba and Big Al, the team lacked scoring options, and had some-$25 million in cap space and the #9 pick in the 2014 Draft to address their issues. Cho selected power forward project-Noah Vonleh in the draft and signed Marvin Williams to replace McBob at the position in 2013-14 and provide some stretch-options from the perimeter. A maximum-contract offer sheet to restricted free agent Gordon Hayward was matched by the Utah Jazz, and Cho then jumped into the Lance conversation.
When recruiting Lance Stephenson, Rich Cho brought in the big guns to finish the deal. The words from team owner Michael Jordan clearly had an impact on Lance, as it made it into a line in his “freestyle” track, and MJ is one of a handful of players in NBA history who could out-celebrity Larry Bird. Choosing to start anew with the Hornets, instead of returning to the internal strife of the now-Paul George-less Pacers, Lance could see increases in his scoring average and possibly his leadership responsibilities as the most-accomplished Hornet, in terms of playoff experience.
Lance led the league in triple doubles last season (with five) and focused on rebounding and running the offense for stretches in Indiana, and will have similar opportunities in Charlotte with Al Jefferson as the leading-scorer, but could look to finish more plays this season. Kemba Walker, a fellow-NYC guard (from the Bronx), averaged 17.7 points and 6.1 assists per game in 35.8 minutes last season, but with 41.7%-shooting on 2's and 33.3% from 3. He’s a solid pick-and-roll shooter that’s entering a contract year (if the two sides can’t agree upon an extension first), but is undersized and struggles finishing in the paint, and is an inefficient scorer that didn’t really improve last season while playing alongside Jefferson (17.7 points per game in 2012-13 and ’13-14). If he sharpens his shot selection on pull-up long-2’s and sacrifices shot attempts for setting up better teammates, he could increase his efficiency (16.8 PER) while ceding his status as the second-leading scorer to Stephenson.
Lance Stephenson’s presence will allow Kemba to play off-the-ball a bit more and spot-up off of drives. While Lance doesn’t provide the deep-spacing that this Hornets offense needs, given Jefferson’s proclivities in the post, he’s a far superior player compared to the incumbents (Henderson and MKG) on the offensive end and makes up for his 35% from 3 with his ball-handling and cutting abilities. He might not be a great catch-and-shoot option off of Jefferson post-ups but he’s good at back-cutting and hitting the offensive glass (1.2 OBoards per game last year). Still just 24 years old, and with only four years of NBA experience playing in a conservative offense, Lance is still developing as an offensive player and could thrive playing in a different system.
His experience as a perimeter defender in the Pacers’ defensive system should translate well. While he doesn’t possess the athleticism and lock-down skills of former teammate Paul George, he slides his feet and uses his hands well, and has reps guarding LeBron James in consecutive-Eastern Conference Finals. Roy Hibbert’s presence will be missed as a safety net while guarding the perimeter but the Bobcats were a top-five team in defending the paint, and some of the funneling techniques could carry over to Steve Clifford’s system. Defensively, he’ll be able to step right into the Hornets starting lineup and contribute.
The questions, as always, with Lance Stephenson revolve around the attitude and personality issues. He and head coach Steve Clifford already seem to be fans of each other, and are optimistic that the Hornets can build upon their successes last season. He’s already gotten the approval of MJ, and the trust and new environment could be good for Lance’s development both personally and professionally. From Charlotte’s perspective, the third-year team option absolves them of any long-term risk, but they need Lance to keep improving his game if the team hopes to build on their first-round playoff exit in 2014.
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