Hornets Insider: Summer league notes on James Bouknight, Brandon Miller and James Nnaji

Stand next to James Bouknight and there’s something noticeably different.

All the time the Charlotte Hornets guard is putting in the weight room during the offseason, tied with a good nutrition regimen, has made him a bit bulkier. Mention the apparent added mass and a wry grin appears.

“It’s been a great summer,” Bouknight told The Observer. “It’s been a big focal point of my summer, just getting bigger, stronger, putting the right things in my body. Yeah, it’s translating. I feel good on the court. I feel much better.

“I haven’t performed the way I would want, but like I said, this is just the start.”

Bouknight is facing a comparable career crossroad to his cohort and summer league teammate Kai Jones, almost joined at the hip with the fellow 2021 first-round pick. He hasn’t latched on in the Hornets’ main rotation for the better part of his first two seasons and wasn’t consistently effective when he did receive key minutes due to injuries to players ahead of him in the pecking order.

With him not playing much at the pro level in 2022-23 and the majority of his action on the court the last calendar year coming in the G League with the Greensboro Swarm, Bouknight needs ways to continue developing. That makes this next week important for the 22-year-old.

The trick is balancing doing the “right” things rather than attempting to fill up the stat sheet. He insists he’s thinking on a grander scale.

“I’m not going out there and trying to score 20 points, 30 points,” Bouknight said. “I’m just going out there and working on the stuff that we need to use during the season. Continue to be in the right spots on defense — whether it’s making the right pass, making the right decision. Just working on what we need during the year.”

Bouknight doesn’t have a choice. It’s his only shot at elbowing himself into the rotation somehow, and he has to show that to the Hornets’ brass throughout the remainder of his minutes this week.

“Of course,” said Hornets assistant and summer league coach Marlon Garnett. “You hit the nail on the head. That’s what it should be about. It shouldn’t be about the competition that we are playing against right now in summer league. It should be, ‘How am I going to have to play and what is my role going to have to be to play in an NBA basketball game?’

“That’s where it’s going to go. And it’s not just him. It’s from a lot of guys. You are going to get your minutes by being able to guard the guy in front of you. I don’t know how many guys are going to get actual play calls when we get into the regular season. So, it should be about that here, not worrying about offense as much.”

Stepping up better defensively is a must for Bouknight, and he thinks he has a plan to execute it. How exactly?

“Just not taking plays off, not taking plays for granted, going hard every possession,” Bouknight said. “I’ve been talking to coach (Steve Clifford) and Coach Marlon, just working on things that I need to work on to get in that rotation.

As he does that, besides becoming mentally sharp, he’ll have that main goal in mind.

“I want to get my body bigger,” Bouknight said, “keep getting right and keep getting stronger.”

Brandon Miller ‘doing the right thing’

The armchair quarterback takes were flying from all directions after Brandon Miller’s first two outings, with most not exactly of the positive variety.

A combined 15 fouls and 24 points, paired with Miller not overly asserting himself during two games at the California Classic in Sacramento, brought the detractors out in full force for the better part of this past holiday week. Perhaps it’s sparked by the Hornets’ rough history hitting on the right lottery picks over the past two decades and the groundswell of emotion from a huge swath of Charlotte fans wishing the franchise drafted Scoot Henderson instead of Miller.

But Garnett wasn’t sounding any alarms before they left the Golden State to head to the desert.

“Brandon, I think, is doing the right thing,” Garnett said. “He’s playing the right way. He’s one of the guys that’s a ball mover for us. He’s just making the right play. He’s not forcing the issue only because he had four shots (Wednesday). I was getting some play calls for him to get him some touches.

“I’m going to say he did a pretty good job of keeping bodies around him. And then he just made the right play. He moved the ball.”

That didn’t change much against Victor Wembanyama and San Antonio on Friday, even though Miller finished with a modest 16 points to go with three steals, an assist, a block and five more fouls, bringing his three-game total to a whopping 20. Garnett still felt the same way.

“I like what Brandon is doing,” Garnett said. “I just want to see his motor a little bit more like he did today. Again, he had a little bit more pop than the first two games, and hopefully that’s an indication of what we’re gonna see going forward.”

James Nnaji adjusting to NBA style

When James Nnaji was acquired by the Hornets via a trade with Boston in the second round of last month’s NBA Draft, he knew things on this side of the pond were going to be dissimilar to what he was used to in Europe.

But the Nigerian didn’t think he’d have to play this much catch-up.

Nnaji, a 6-foot-11 center with a 7-4 wingspan who spent the past two seasons with FC Barcelona in the Spanish ACB league and EuroLeague, didn’t hit the floor with his new teammates until the tail end of the time in Sacramento. He missed the first three days of summer league practice and sat out Monday’s game against San Antonio while still awaiting his international clearance from FIBA, finally getting approval from the world’s governing body of basketball to allow him to be on the court in Wednesday’s loss to Golden State and Friday’s defeat to the Spurs.

“For me, it was frustrating because I thought FIBA could write it and give it right away,” Nnaji said. “But they were delayed the whole time, and it was out of my control. So, I couldn’t do nothing. Neither could my agent nor could the club do anything. So, we had to wait patiently and then we got it.”

Nnaji had never been to the states before arriving in town these last few weeks, making for a whirlwind. Not only does he have to slowly acclimate himself to a new culture in a short span, he’s attempting to alter his typical thought process out on the floor.

Individual player speed and game tempo are on another level in the NBA. And Nnaji found himself a little winded on occasion in that first outing against the Warriors.

“Wherever I play, maybe we shoot the ball in the last four seconds,” Nnaji said. “Meanwhile here, within 14 seconds, we are putting the shot up, and you run up and down a lot. Where I’m from, we have to construct every single possession we have. It’s a different game, and it’s just a different defense.

“I’m trying to adapt to it and trying to see if I can adapt to it real quick because that is the most important thing. Adapting is not the problem, but how fast can you do it is very important.”

Garnett likes what he’s seeing from Nnaji so far.

“Big body out there,” Garnett said. “He’s getting his hands on the basketball and his feet wet. I’m just excited and happy to have seen him out there. I think he is just going to continue to get better and improve, hopefully, before the summer league ends and then he has basically a base that he can start from as he goes into whatever situation is going to happen down the line.”