Great teams are built on superstars. Legendary organizations are built on culture. The very best organizations rarely spend too much time rebuilding or at the top of the NBA Draft Lottery is because they’ve instilled in themselves a culture and plan they stick to. It doesn’t matter what players or coaches they bring in, at the end of the day there’s a plan and that plan is going to be followed.
Creating a culture that sticks is hard. It’s a lot of time, work, and luck. The Hornets have spent the last decade plus of time trying to install one. Between multiple owners, a brand change, front office changes, coach changes, and more, finding consistency in Charlotte has been nearly impossible. However, right now, they have one constant and that’s Kemba Walker. The Hornets guard continues to improve on a yearly basis and has proven that he is a superstar level talent to be reckoned with in the league. He is also a piece the Hornets can’t afford to lose.
Nobody impacts a team quite like Kemba Walker does. When Walker is on the floor, the Hornets have a net rating of 4.8. When he sits on the bench it falls to .4. Nobody in Charlotte has that kind of individual impact. The second best player on the Hornets is a toss up between a very good but not great center in Cody Zeller or the extremely inconsistent Nicolas Batum. His ability on the basketball court speaks for itself.
Walker is going to be a free agent at the end of this season. What Charlotte decides to do with him could impact its future for years to come. If the choose to let Walker go and do a hard reset, the Hornets could very well find another superstar and establish a culture later on. Many teams have done it in the past. From a basketball perspective that might be what’s best for the Hornets, because they don’t want to risk wasting Walker’s career while sitting in mediocrity, never being able to acquire that potential generational talent.
The problem with doing this is the risks are monumental. If the Hornets allow Walker to leave they’re not only risking that they never get another player like him again, but they might be sending away their best chance they have at establishing a culture. Walker is more than just one of the best shooters in the NBA. He does more than attacks the rim with a technique that leaves even the NBA’s best defenders with no shot at guarding him. Walker is the leader of the Hornets and he has one of those special personalities. The kind of personalities the Hornets can build a culture on. Via ESPN’s Zach Lowe.
Struggling amid a 7-59 season will lend that sort of perspective. “There were times I didn’t know if I even belonged in the NBA,” Walker says. “Everyone at this level is so good — bigger, stronger, faster. There were so many guys who could do what I do. I just didn’t know.”
He couldn’t handle the sheer volume of losses. As Charlotte players trudged into the home locker room after one of those 59 losses, they heard someone screaming. “We can’t keep f—ing losing,” the man shouted, according to several players. “We’ve got to be better than this! I’m tired of this losing s—!”
It was Walker. He was weeping. Veterans were stunned. “Some guys were like, ‘Oh well, we lost another game, what are we doing tonight?'” Gerald Henderson recalls. “And Kemba’s in tears. It was like, ‘Damn, this s— really matters to him. This cat cares.'”
Every team has a moment with a player where they know they’re going to stick with them through it all. For the Hornets, it had to be this one. Walker in tears in the locker room, on arguably the worst team in NBA history, demanding more from his team. He didn’t want to deal with the losing anymore in just his rookie year. Many players accept that losing is just a part of the NBA and let it settle in. Walker was already setting a message for his teammates from day one. In Lowe’s piece about Walker, he wrote about how Walker’s ability to win over his teammates might be his greatest strength.
It reminded Silas, an assistant with the Warriors from 2006 to 2010, of another point guard. “Steph and Kemba are similar in the effect they can have on people,” Silas says. When Clifford’s health issues forced Silas to act as Charlotte’s interim head coach last season, Walker went out of his way to compliment him — both privately and in front of the team. “He didn’t have to do that,” Silas says.
Teammates grew to love him. When Michael Kidd-Gilchrist signed his extension in 2015, Walker was the first person he thanked. “Not my mother, not my sister, not my brother,” he says. “It was Kemba. He inspired me.”
These seem like small stories of a player that’s beloved by his teammates, but it’s something more than that. All of these incredible organizations that great cultures exist had a starting point. For the Heat it was the arrival of Pat Riley and his no nonsense attitude. For the Lakers, it’s a history of winning and being in one of America’s great destination cities. For the Spurs, it’s the organization before the individual mindset. However, all of these organizations exist because they had players that helped solidify it. Dwyane Wade, Magic Johnson, and Tim Duncan are all guys that helped solidify these teams into becoming what they wanted to be.
The Hornets have someone special personality wise in Kemba Walker. He might not be a legendary NBA player on the same level as those three, but you can just see his impact on that organization and locker room. You see Walker’s work ethic, his leadership, and the positives he’s brought and it’s completely understandable why the Hornets are so hesitant to let him go. More importantly. He wants to be there and the Hornets want him there. There’s no need to get cute here. The Hornets need to keep Walker. Not just for winning games, but because he’s their best chance at creating what every team in the NBA wants. A real culture that matters.
