Did the Answer to the Charlotte Hornets' Point Guard Problem Just Hit the Trade Market?

Are we sure the Charlotte Hornets are done wheeling and dealing?

As it stands, Charlotte has 18 rostered players, the max a team can carry during the offseason, with one glaring weakness left to fill: backup point guard.

We wrote about the franchise's reported pursuit of Dennis Schröder yesterday, which would make some sense, but recent reports about another disgruntled veteran point guard could create another avenue for Charlotte to fix their backup point guard issue.

Kelly Iko of Yahoo! Sports reported that the Memphis Grizzlies and D'Angelo Russell are "expected to work together toward a resolution that would allow the 30-year-old to find a new home at some point this offseason." People in their early 30s are flocking to Charlotte (I am guilty of doing so myself), could Russell be the next millennial to pack up and move to the Queen City?

Let's start with breaking down how Charlotte could acquire the former second-overall pick.

At the 2026 trade deadline, the Hornets created trade exceptions of $8M in the Collin Sexton trade, and $7M in the Tyus Jones trade, both of which would fit Russell's $5.9M salary for the upcoming season. A simple deal including one of Mo Gueye or Pat Connaughton's expiring contract and a lightly-protected second-round pick or two could be enough to secure Russell on the trade market as it is clear that his future isn't in Memphis.

Russell has always been a polarizing player. His career averages of 17.0 points, 3.3 rebounds, and 5.6 assists paint him as an effective floor general, but his ball-dominant style has made him difficult to build around. That shouldn't be an issue at this stage of his career as Russell transitions out of his prime where he expected to start games and have the offense flow through him, into a time where he can provide an impact off the bench in shorter spurts.

The left-handed point guard has always been a slick passer who has an indelible effect on his teammate's shot quality. RAPM, regularized adjusted plus-minus, a stat that attempts to quantify a player's overall impact on the quality of possessions, has long painted Russell in a positive light.

A portion of the RAPM formula is oTS, offensive true-shooting percentage, which measures a players effect on a team's shooting efficiency in terms of net rating, has graded out D'Angelo Russell as a positive player in every three-year window since 2020.

Last season was the first of Russell's career that he earned a negative EPM rating from Dunks and Threes, although his -0.3 EPM was still in the 64th percentile among all NBA players.

He has his flaws, though, some of which could be mitigated in a reserve role in the right lineups. Russell is a turnstile on defense who has never made an impact on the possession game via the boards or event creation. He is also a streaky shooter who has seen his overall three-point shooting accuracy fall off a cliff in recent years, connecting on 31.4% of his threes in 2024-25 and 29.5% in 2025-26.

In all, though, he's a better option to backup Coby White than Charlotte has on their roster at the current moment, even if Russell just represents a stop gap that helps the team's reserve units stay afloat until the trade deadline just like Collin Sexton did last year. This is all about extending Christian Anderson's developmental runway, allowing him some time to bulk up and adjust to life in the NBA before handing him the ball for 15+ minutes per game as White's backup.

Russell is cost-effective, he's been around the league for a long time, and despite the warts that plague his game, Russell still can be the effective 15-20 minute-a-night point guard that the Hornets so desperately need right now.

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