Last week, I posted the official At the Hive draft board for the two picks the Charlotte Hornets hold in the 2026 NBA Draft. I had profiled just about all of the players projected to go in the Hornets range. We still have a week to go until the draft, so we’ll take a look at a couple of less likely but still possible candidates for the 14th and 18th picks.
One of those players is Nate Ament, who generally seems projected to go in the top 12 or so picks, but there are a few outlets that are lower on him. He’s definitely a project, but his physical profile is a hard one to find, and he has the tools to be a really, really good player. Everyone loves the tools.
Measurements
Height: 6’9.5″
Weight: 210.8 pounds
Wingspan: 6’11.5″
Standing reach: 9’1.5″
Standing vertical: 31″
Max vertical: 37″
Strengths
Physical tools, scoring potential, defensive potential
Pretty much everything in this section is “potential.” Ament is kind of like a throwback prospect from the mid-2000s where you see his physical stature and watch him in a workout setting and think “yeah this guy has to be good at basketball.” He’s nearly 6’10” but has the fluidity of a normal sized wing. He’s smooth and bendy and simply looks the part of a jumbo sized NBA wing. It’s very hard to find players with his physical profile that moves like he does, and that alone makes him an NBA prospect.
The boost to Ament’s perceived potential are some signs that Ament could become a shot maker. 6’10” shot makers are always in demand, even if it not as much as in the past. But again, this is just potential. Ament has a decent looking shot and hit at an okay percentage, but nothing was elite. The selling point here is that he’s capable of scoring in a variety of ways, not that he does any of them at an elite level yet. He shot decently well both off the catch and off the dribble from three, and he was pretty good at rising up off the dribble in the mid range. He got to the line a whole lot and shot a respectable 79% when he got there. He’s got a decent handle, and his size makes it very hard to contest his shot when he chooses to rise up for a jumper. He should be able to slot in as an off ball player that can catch and shoot or attack shifting defenses.
Ament tries on defense, and the tools make it so it’d be really hard for him to be a bad defender. He’s not the most explosive athlete, so he’s not likely to be a big time shot blocker, but his size and length make him a difficult player to navigate around. You’d like to see more stocks, but it seems like his defensive range is somewhere between good enough and very good.
Question marks
Efficiency, finishing ability, overall impact
While Ament shows the capability to score the ball at multiple levels, the production wasn’t always consistent. He ended up shooting sub-40% from the field. He shot 33.3% from three, which is okay for a young player at his position, but it left room for his struggles at the rim to drag his overall percentage to an almost unacceptable level. His jump shot isn’t the prettiest, but it looks fundamentally sound for the most part, though he seems to pull back his follow through a good bit. He’ll need to actually start consistently making the shots he’s shown he can make to reach his potential.
The biggest drawback to Ament’s offensive game is his finishing at the basket. He didn’t dunk the ball all that much for a player of his size, and he didn’t make up for it with any sort of deft touch around the basket. He tries to play physical but seemingly always loses out in the contact made around the basket. He tends to flail a bit when he gets met with contact and I don’t know how well he maintains his focus trying to make shots when that happens. Almost like he gets preoccupied with the contact.
In general, Ament has a lot of hypothetical selling points but didn’t display them at a consistent enough level to make you really confident in its translatability.
Overview
In a normal year where the Hornets only had one first round pick, I’d be pretty low on Ament. To use the terminology from the big board, he’d be in the “in the Hornets’ range but not the best option” tier. I understand the appeal of tools, but tools are meaningless without the ability to use them. I don’t like the idea of counting on a player to be a better NBA player than they were a college player.
That said, the Hornets have two picks in this draft. If there was ever a time to take a high risk gamble on a toolsy prospect with a lot of room to grow, it’s in a draft where you have two picks and a roster that doesn’t need immediate help. I wouldn’t mind pairing Ament with another player with more defined NBA traits. One his bound to hit.
To summarize my feelings on Ament–he’s really big. That’s a good starting point. After that, it’s almost like his biggest strength is that he doesn’t have an obvious glaring weakness, and his biggest weakness is that he doesn’t have an obvious NBA strength. If you squint hard enough, you can see all sorts of outcomes for Ament. At his best, you see some Michael Porter Jr. with better connective passing. Or maybe the shot stays mediocre and he struggles to find a consistent spot a la Kevin Knox. Or maybe he lands somewhere in the middle and turns into a Rui Hachimura-type solid positional defender that can knock down some threes and occasionally create a look for himself. The possibilities are literally endless, probably even more so than other prospects.
