Hornets picked Brandon Miller at No. 2, but could have done better in NBA Draft

Underwhelming.

That’s the word that comes to mind when you look at what the Charlotte Hornets did Thursday night in the NBA Draft.

When you have the No. 2 overall pick, your high side is Alonzo Mourning or Kevin Durant. You’re not always going to get a hall of famer, but you hope you’re going to get someone who not only can play but who has no off-court baggage to speak of and who fans are immediately excited about.

Brandon Miller checks one of those three boxes: He can play. At least at the college level, he was a star. He was the SEC’s Player of the Year as a freshman at Alabama.

But as for the fans:

The crowd-reaction shots Thursday night made clear they by and large preferred Scoot Henderson. The funniest shot came in a video from Charlotte’s WCNC, which showed Hugo the Hornet dropping his head at the Spectrum Center fan party right as the pick was announced.

And the baggage? Let’s make it crystal clear that Miller hasn’t been charged with any crime for this. But in January, he transported a gun to a former teammate who has since been charged in a capital murder case.

Miller’s attorney has said that Miller had no knowledge of the intent to use the weapon, never touched the gun and wasn’t involved in its exchange. The Hornets did their due diligence, they said, and came away after visits to Alabama deciding they wanted to pick Miller.

“We’re comfortable, obviously,” Mitch Kupchak, Charlotte’s general manager. “We made the decision to draft him.”

Still, to me, it’s not a great look — especially for a Hornets team that quite possibly is going to re-sign Miles Bridges, who pleaded no contest to a felony domestic violence in November and got suspended for 30 games by NBA commissioner Adam Silver.

On an unrelated note, Miller says his GOAT — his “greatest player of all time” — is Paul George.

Are you kidding me?

Even Paul George knows that Paul George isn’t the greatest player of all time. Good thing Michael Jordan is about to leave the building for good; the soon-to-be former Hornets majority owner wouldn’t stand for that long-term.

Now I could be dead wrong about all this, and Hornets fans gleefully like to point out that my most notable misstep was criticizing Charlotte’s pick of LaMelo Ball at No. 3 in 2020. All Ball did was become the NBA’s Rookie of the Year and then an all-star by 2022. I airballed that one, and maybe Miller will have the same trajectory. He needs to for the Hornets to break the NBA’s longest current non-playoffs streak (they haven’t made the playoffs since 2016 and went 27-55 last season).

It’s true that Miller is a more natural fit with Ball than Henderson would have been. He shoots three-pointers better, for one thing. I actually preferred him over Henderson, as I wrote prior to the draft, if the Hornets were going to keep the No.2 pick.

But my main preference was for the Hornets to trade the pick for a proven veteran, because I don’t think Miller will be a big enough star to justify that No. 2 slot. I think the Hornets could have done better. If only the Hornets could have gotten Victor Wem…. OK, we all know that. Only one team got Wembanyama; the other 29 had to try to improve by other means.

The Hornets didn’t just choose Miller Thursday night. They also took Arkansas guard Nick Smith Jr. at No. 27 overall in the first round, then traded two of their second-round picks to end up with Nigerian center James Nnaji, who was the No. 31 overall pick and is a major project. They closed the draft with Amari Bailey, a guard from UCLA, at No. 41.

Maybe there’s a gem in there somewhere. Maybe there’s even a couple.

But on first glance? I don’t see it.