An honest assessment of Tidjane Salaün's rookie season with the Charlotte Hornets

Fran Fraschilla etched his name into NBA meme culture when he declared that 2014 Toronto Raptors draft pick Bruno Cabocolo was ‘three years away from being three years away.’ As the teenagers' grainy Novo Basquete Brasil highlights muddied ESPN’s traditionally pristine draft coverage, Cabocolo’s runway to becoming an NBA-level contributor extended along with the leeway fans were willing to give the lottery pick.

Tidjane Salaün, the Charlotte Hornets’ first round draft pick in 2024, could have used a similar treatment.

The Frenchman was never supposed to contribute for the Hornets in 2024-25. In a historically shallow pool of draft talent, Jeff Peterson and Charles Lee swung for the fences and selected a raw prospect with intriguing upside as a future gamble, not a year-one, all-in wager.

Salaün's rookie year was a roller coaster of ups and (mostly) downs. Let's talk about it.

Analyzing Salaün's rookie season

Even the most rudimentary basketball skills were difficult for Salaün to execute in the torture chamber that is the National Basketball Association. Outside of knocking down a number of triples from the parking lot, Tidjane's maiden campaign left much to be desired.

Statistically speaking, Salaün was one of the NBA's least impactful players in 2024-25. His Cleaning the Glass profile has more blue (re: below average) than the Orlando Magic's NBA Cup court.

Salaün's effective field goal percentage? 41.7%, a third percentile number in the league. His field goal percentage at the rim? 56%, a seventh percentile number in basketball. The percentage of shooting attempts he was fouled on? 9.5%, good for the 30th percentile.

Nothing came easy for Tidjane on the offensive end. Save for the occasional hot stretch from deep, the rookie was borderline unplayable when Charlotte possessed the ball. It's almost like you could see Salaün's brain buffering in real time when watching him attempt to make fast-paced decisions in the up-tempo NBA game.

Tidjane Salaün's offensive accuracy and defense/rebounding numbers. | via Cleaning the Glass

Unfortunately, Salaün's defense and rebounding numbers don't grade out much better. He turned in a fifth percentile block rate, a 29th percentile steal rate, a 45th percentile defensive rebounding rate, and the film tells the same story. Still a teenager, it's evident that Tidjane is still attempting to harness his gargantuan frame in a functional way. He moves around the court like a giraffe learning how to roller skate because on some levels, he is exactly that.

This is where the boatload of context is needed when discussing Salaün's rookie season. It was never supposed to be this way.

Rewind to June of 2024 and all of the discourse surrounding the NBA Draft was about how weak that class of prospects was. There wasn't a Cooper Flagg level, bonafide number one overall selection, and frankly, each of the prospects ranked 2-7 in the 2025 class would have a legitimate case to be selected at number one over Zaccharie Risacher if they were eligible a summer earlier.

Yes. Zach Edey, Jaylen Wells, Matas Buzelis, and a host of other prospects performed at a significantly higher level than Salaün in 2024-25, but each of those players walked into the NBA with more polish to their game than the French rookie.

To add more context, Salaün was playing halfway across the globe from his native France for the first time in his life in 2024-25. Every road trip, every plane ride, every film session, every work out, was brand new for Tidjane. Other international rookies handled the copious amounts of change better than Salaün, but at the end of the day, he's still a developing teenagers in his basketball infancy.

Jeff Peterson and Charles Lee didn't select Tidjane Salaün with the sixth overall pick because he was a well-rounded prospect. They selected him because he was a malleable lump of clay with an insatiable desire to be great. Salaün plays with incredible passion and feeds off of the energy of the crowd and his teammates, building himself to a fever pitch in tense moments.

His traits, although still fledgling, are worth giving a chance. He was never supposed to contribute in the NBA as a rookie, but early injuries to Brandon Miller, Mark Williams, Nick Richards, Miles Bridges, and Grant Williams forced Salaün into a trial by fire that he failed with flying colors.

However, the story of his career shouldn't be written after one season. Circle back next spring and see how Salaün develops with a year of professional ball under his belt, a full offseason with Charles Lee and his coaching staff in Charlotte, and ideally for him and his teammates, a more functional situation around him come October.

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