The Charlotte Hornets announced their full 21 player training camp roster on Tuesday.
Nothing too too crazy here. It’s all the names we’re familiar with along with a few extra guys for camp. DJ Rodman seems to be the surviving member of the series of transactions the Hornets made to seemingly prep the Greensboro Swarm’s roster. There is one other new name on the list–Ibou Badji.
Badji is a big man that spent last season with the Wisconsin Herd in the G League. He started 29 games with averages of 6.8 points, 5.6 rebounds, and 3.4 blocks per game. He was all defense in the G League in no small part because of that pretty insane block rate. The rest of the game is raw, but he’s going to be a menace to practice against in camp.
This isn’t necessarily breaking news, but this training camp roster reminds us that there are more players under contract than the Hornets can keep. We can assume that Rodman and Badji are destined to be waived and sent to the G League. KJ Simpson, Drew Peterson, and Antonio Reeves are on two-way contracts. That still leaves 16 players on NBA contracts. The maximum is 15. We already saw Nick Smith Jr. become a casualty of the roster crunch. One more player is going to meet that same fate. Pat Connaughton seems to be the most likely candidate given he was acquired for salary matching in a trade and is on an expiring contract. Spencer Dinwiddie is also on the only year of his deal, and it’s a much smaller deal, but it’d be surprising to see the Hornets sign a veteran of Dinwiddie’s status only to release him a couple months later.
Camp started on Monday and will run through Saturday before the Hornets open their preseason slate on Sunday against the Thunder.
