What Jeff Peterson’s First Two Drafts Reveal About His Plans This Year

Going into his third draft cycle as the Charlotte Hornets’ lead decision-maker, President of Basketball Operations Jeff Peterson has already started to establish distinct trends in what this front office values.

With Charlotte holding picks No. 14 and No. 18 in next month’s NBA Draft and a wide variety of directions the organization could go, what can we take away from the six players Peterson has already drafted, and how might that help narrow down or hint at who the Hornets could select three and a half weeks from now?

Hornets DNA

When looking at the short history of this regime’s draft selections, what becomes apparent immediately is that Charlotte does not appear locked into a specific player archetype or skill profile, but rather a clear philosophy in the types of traits and characteristics the organization consistently prioritizes.

For starters, players who have won and understand how to contribute to winning basketball clearly matter significantly to Peterson.

That might sound obvious, but for a Charlotte club that, before this past season, had spent much of the last decade as one of the losingest teams in the league during that stretch, this new ownership group and brain trust has made a conscious effort to bring in people who understand what being part of a winning organization actually looks like, and that goes well beyond just the draft selections they have made.

Bringing in Head Coach Charles Lee and his assistants, improving the roster talent and coaching infrastructure with the Greensboro Swarm, adding veterans to the backend of the rotation like Pat Connaughton and Xavier Tillman, and, of course, bringing in young players who won a ton in high school and college, there has been a top-to-bottom approach centered around bringing those types of personalities into the fold.

It is a fairly straightforward idea, but it has already been effective for this front office in raising the overall floor of performance for the Hornets.

That philosophy also shows up in the collegiate backgrounds of Charlotte’s recent rookie class. Think about adding Kon Knueppel and Sion James, two players coached by one of the top college coaches in Jon Scheyer, at Duke, while playing on a statistically dominant team, along with selecting Liam McNeeley, who played under Dan Hurley at UConn before arriving in Charlotte.

These are players who come from top-tier winning programs where playing the right way, being team-first minded, and competing at a high level on both ends are the expectations the moment you walk through the door.

Beyond that, what really stands out is how much this front office seems to prioritize ultra-competitive, high-feel players, particularly in last year’s class.

Additionally, Peterson has placed a major emphasis on finding players who fit around his two stars, LaMelo Ball and Brandon Miller. Players who can complement their games, maintain offensive advantages that Ball in particular creates through connective passing, and provide the requisite shooting gravity to make life easier on Charlotte’s top offensive creators.

Betting on certainty

We have also learned Charlotte does not seem afraid to draft high-floor players who project as NBA role players.

Outside of selecting Tidjane Salaün in 2024, Peterson really has not gone with pure upside swings when drafting prospects. And even with Salaün, the vision behind that selection was that he would ideally develop into a floor-spacing 3-and-D forward and serve as an ancillary piece who could eventually grow into a solid rotation player.

Peterson just seems to gravitate toward more proven-commodity prospects with clear, defined NBA skill sets that can be plugged directly into Charlotte’s system, with little uncertainty about how their games will translate to the pro game. Drafting Ryan Kalkbrenner in the early second round last year was a perfect proof of concept for that approach.

Charlotte needed size at center after trading away Mark Williams on draft night, so the Hornets drafted a player who spent five years at Creighton and won Big East Defensive Player of the Year four straight times. Along with that, the strong screening, good hands, rim protection, and efficiency around the basket were already established parts of Kalkbrenner’s game that translated pretty seamlessly and directly helped Charlotte win games this past season.

That same general idea applied across the rest of that class as well, where the skills that made those players attractive were already fairly clear and looked ready to contribute on an NBA floor.

It is really just a savvy way of team building. Finding cost-controlled rotation players year after year who can help you win basketball games early in their careers feels like something this front office covets.

This speaks to the fact that some of the bigger long-term projection bets in Charlotte’s range this draft cycle just do not totally chart based on the short history we have seen so far with this front office.

A player like Tennessee’s Nate Ament is the ultimate toolsy, unicorn-ish forward in Charlotte’s range, but there are real questions about how his frame holds up physically at the NBA level, along with whether his shot creation will translate as well.

I also think of guys like Texas’ Dailyn Swain and Arizona’s Koa Peat, who have legitimate three-point shooting form concerns as prospects that operate on the perimeter a lot, so it is reasonable to question how cleanly they would fit into Charlotte’s offensive scheme.

Even someone like Jayden Quaintance, who put really great defensive tape on film during his freshman season at Arizona State before tearing his right ACL in February 2025, has not played much basketball since then.

There is just naturally some ambiguity around where his development currently is as a player, and, based on the evidence we have from Peterson’s first two drafts, that type of projection bet just does not really follow the pattern Charlotte has established so far.

The likely matches

The players I do think really fit the traits, character, winning background, and concrete skill sets Charlotte values are the two Michigan forwards, Morez Johnson Jr. and Yaxel Lendeborg.

Santa Clara’s Allen Graves also fits that mold with his advanced analytical profile, outside shooting, passing, sturdy wide frame, defensive tape, and rebounding.

Washington’s Hannes Steinbach is another one, just because of the high floor, his rebounding, size, and physicality give him. A lot of the things he does already feel like traits that will translate to the NBA level.

Only time will tell if Charlotte even makes both the No. 14 and No. 18 picks in next month’s draft, but if the Hornets keep both selections, I would bet whoever they take falls in line with what Peterson and Charlotte’s brain trust have valued before.

They are clearly trying to draft not just the right player, but the right person to hopefully help them win basketball games as soon as next season.

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