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00:00 Moving on to our final player, Teo Maladon. I can't say I have a lot of great notes here.
00:05 Teo Maladon, look, I remember I was on this podcast saying that six or seven games into
00:14 the season, people are going to be complaining about Teo Maladon or Nick Smith Jr. playing
00:19 back at point guard. And they're going to be the same people who are saying that the Hornets should
00:24 just, you know, shouldn't go out and sign anyone or trade anyone. And that's exactly what's
00:28 happening. Teo has really struggled. Shooting the ball has just been a complete offensive liability.
00:34 That said, I actually think he's defended really well in his minutes, but he's been playing as like
00:40 a shooting guard. Steve Clifford does not trust Teo Maladon to be the point guard right now. He
00:46 is always paired with Rozier or Ball or it was Isch Smith for a very brief period last night.
00:53 And it's just if you can't shoot and you can't play on ball as a creator, even if he's good at
01:02 defense, you just need to have more to your game to be an NBA rotation player. You can't just be
01:07 too narrow in that skill set. So he was good in the Dallas game, especially in that first half,
01:12 but he just lacks that offensive consistency night in night out. So if anything, what we've
01:19 seen so far for me is Teo Maladon is not a long term point guard right now, or certainly not at
01:26 the moment. Who knows how much that shoulder injury is still affecting him. It definitely
01:30 still could be. But it's just been, he's been good defensively, but almost unplayable offensively.
01:37 Yeah, I think I brought this up on the last podcast too, like his jumper just does not look
01:44 good, like mechanically, like I definitely think that that shoulder injury, maybe not
01:48 pain wise is still affecting him, but just the lack of reps that he got in the preseason and
01:53 during training camp seems to be affecting him right now as a spot up shooter from three.
01:58 I mean, he is just a complete non threat, both off the catch off the dribble. Really, the only way
02:05 that he can impact the offense positively right now is when he gets a ball screen and can make a
02:10 read out of it. But again, those situations are few and far between because a, like you said,
02:15 he's paired with another guard. That's going to get the bulk of those reps anyway, because Terry
02:19 and Lamella are both better at ball screen navigation as a ball handler than he is.
02:24 And B, he can't shoot and he can't drive and he can't get to the rim at a high enough rate to where
02:30 any defense is going to like respect that and do anything other than just say, okay, here you go.
02:35 You can take this, you know, elbow jumper or whatever, which I think he made one against
02:39 Dallas and I think he made a three against them as well. But that was pretty much it. Like those
02:45 kind of just faded out after that. He had like a quick five points, like in the first quarter,
02:50 I think with him and Nick Richards. And then after that, he was basically invisible for the
02:54 rest of the game. And it's definitely like, I mean, right now I probably would still say he's
03:01 like the best option as a backup point guard, maybe until Ish gets like fully into game shape.
03:06 But I mean, in like a week or so, I think of repeated performances like these for Maldon,
03:12 I think Ish Smith is probably going to start getting the bulk of his minutes
03:15 once he's, you know, fully up to speed if Tao keeps it up.
03:19 I mean, Ish was one, you know, he had one foot in retirement, so I can promise you he probably
03:25 wasn't training as hard over the summer as most of these guys.
03:27 Yeah, definitely.
03:28 Like I was hoping that he would be able to come in and make more of an impact,
03:33 but it's pretty clear, I think that he's just not in physical shape yet.
03:36 Yeah, I think the Pacers game was the first game he even dressed for, right? Like,
03:42 I don't think he was even had warmups on until then.
03:46 Yeah. Nope, I don't have anything else to add to Tao. I mean, I think as we've seen,
03:54 the bench options, Thor, Maldon have not been great.
03:57 The Hornets have not played a lot of guys, right? The fact they've only played nine guys,
04:01 I think I've seen it's like the lowest number of
04:03 plays received minutes in the NBA so far. And I've seen some people try and throw that as a
04:08 criticism towards Steve Clifford for that. I mean, let's look at the context here.
04:13 I think that's for good reason. You've got Miles Bridger suspended,
04:16 injuries to Frank Nilakina, James Bucknight, Cody Martin.
04:21 You just signed Ish Smith out of retirement. I mean, you're talking about five players there
04:25 who are just simply unavailable right now. Who do you want Steve Clifford to play? Nick Smith Jr.?
04:31 Okay, I guess. But I just don't understand that criticism being put that way.
04:39 I think Clifford is trying to win games, which I completely understand at this point in the season.
04:43 And right now I think playing the guys he's played has given him the highest chance. I don't have any
04:49 qualms over really any of the rotation decisions yet.
04:52 No, I mean, the only player that you could maybe put in and expect to get a positive
04:58 impact from is Nick Smith. Other than that, you're just down to your two-way players,
05:02 one of which is already in the rotation.
05:04 McGowan, who's been back recently.
05:05 Oh, true. Yeah, that's true. I was looking at the minutes log from the last game. And he did
05:09 play 10 minutes in his season debut against Dallas. But even so, that's still one guy.
05:15 And he's playing with obviously an ankle that is not 100%. He's sprained twice. It's not like he is
05:22 full of beans and jumping up and down ready to go. He is probably playing through something that
05:28 is still sore and is still limiting him a little bit.
05:30 Yeah, I agree. I'm completely with you. I would not stretch out this rotation any further than
05:37 it has been so far. I don't think that that would be beneficial for the Hornets if they're trying to
05:41 win games at all right now. So I'm totally with you. I think the Dallas broadcast noted that when
05:47 I was watching the game back this morning as well. And I thought that was a very cool nugget myself.
05:52 Yeah. All right, Chase, we are done with our first ever Hornets 9-60.
05:57 We got through a lot of info there.
06:00 We did.
06:02 We need to pat ourselves on the back. You know, it's a lot harder to prep for a podcast where
06:06 you have to talk about all nine players than it is where you just talk about one. This took some
06:10 time today. So thank you for listening. And if you made it all the way to the Teo Maledon section,
06:15 and you're still listening now, congratulations. You are a Hornet seco because to stay to the end
06:20 of Teo, we respect you for that.