Scouting one-pager: Charlotte Hornets (CHA)

2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,292 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.

Terms

PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
FGA: Field-goal attempts.
RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
CI: Confidence interval.

Keys

Above-the-break three team: corners are only 22.9% of their threes (league 25.9%); their spacing lives higher on the arc.
Volume-three profile: 48.7% of attempts from deep (league 41.5%).
Kon Knueppel is a genuine shot-maker: +9.1 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
Best shot diet: Moussa Diabaté (1.29 xPPS on 363 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
Their most-used five that wins its minutes: M. Bridges - L. Ball - M. Diabaté - B. Miller - K. Knueppel (+26.6/100 over 1,054 possessions).

Shot profile vs league

	CHA	League	Δ
PPS (points per shot)	1.105	1.091	+0.014
xPPS, the shot-diet price*	1.093	1.097	-0.004
Shot-making, pts/100 vs model	+1.2	-0.5	+1.8
Rim share	26.1%	28.4%	-2.3 pp
Mid-range share	6.0%	10.0%	-4.0 pp
Three share	48.7%	41.5%	+7.2 pp
Corner share of threes	22.9%	25.9%	-3.0 pp
Final-4s (rush) shot share	2.1%	1.8%	+0.3 pp

* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).

Personnel (top 8 by volume)

Player	FGA	PPS	xPPS (diet)	Making/100	EB making	RAPM/100
LaMelo Ball	1,244	1.032	1.011	+2.1	+1.5	+3.7
Kon Knueppel	1,084	1.202	1.079	+12.3	+9.1	+2.1
Brandon Miller	1,044	1.065	1.060	+0.5	+0.3	+2.9
Miles Bridges	1,042	1.061	1.090	-2.8	-2.3	-1.4
Collin Sexton	414	1.114	1.046	+6.7	+3.7	-0.6
Sion James	372	0.965	1.132	-16.7	-8.8	-0.3
Moussa Diabaté	363	1.264	1.294	-2.9	-2.2	+3.2
Tre Mann	303	0.884	1.018	-13.4	-6.9	-3.7

EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).

Most-used lineups

Lineup	Min	Poss	Net/100
M. Bridges - L. Ball - M. Diabaté - B. Miller - K. Knueppel	509	1,054	+26.6
M. Bridges - L. Ball - B. Miller - R. Kalkbrenner - K. Knueppel	111	240	+6.7
M. Bridges - L. Ball - M. Diabaté - K. Knueppel - S. James	91	187	+13.9