Charlotte Hornets and Atlanta Hawks Trade Role Players Ahead of NBA Season
NBA training camps are days away, but the Charlotte Hornets and Atlanta Hawks have already started shuffling the deck inside the Southeast Division.
Charlotte is sending forward Dorian Finney-Smith to Atlanta in exchange for guards Buddy Hield and Ryan Nembhard, a person with direct knowledge of the deal confirmed Tuesday to USA TODAY Sports. The person requested anonymity because the trade has not been made official.
It’s not a blockbuster. It is revealing.
Hornets double down on shooting
The Hornets only picked up Finney-Smith in July in a cash considerations deal, a low-risk flyer on a veteran who built his reputation as a classic 3-and-D wing. That version of Finney-Smith never arrived in Houston last season.
Across 37 games with the Rockets, the 33-year-old stumbled to career lows almost across the board: 3.3 points, 2.5 rebounds, 33.3% from the field and just 27% from beyond the arc. For a player whose value is tied almost entirely to perimeter defense and reliable corner threes, those numbers left little margin for patience.
Charlotte has made its intentions clear. It wants shooting — and lots of it.
Hield, also 33, fits that brief as cleanly as anyone on the market. He’s a career 39.5% shooter from three, one of the league’s more prolific long-range threats over the past decade. Even when his role shrinks, his gravity doesn’t. Defenses track him as soon as he crosses half court.
He just never found a lane in Atlanta.
After the Hawks acquired him in February in the same deal that brought Jonathan Kuminga to Atlanta and sent Kristaps Porziņģis to the Golden State Warriors, Hield struggled to carve out a consistent place in the rotation. The fit never truly clicked, and minutes followed accordingly. In Charlotte, where spacing has been a recurring problem, the path to relevance looks far clearer.
The Hornets also add Nembhard, a different kind of bet.
Forced into a starting point guard role with the Dallas Mavericks while Kyrie Irving recovered from a torn anterior cruciate ligament, Nembhard was thrown into the deep end early. The younger brother of Indiana Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard, he’s already shown he can organize an offense under pressure and survive being targeted night after night.
For a Charlotte team still searching for backcourt stability behind its stars, that experience matters.
Hawks gamble on a reset for Finney-Smith
For Atlanta, this is a wager on a bounce-back.
Finney-Smith’s 2023-24 numbers in Houston were brutal, but his body of work before that tells a different story. Coaches have long trusted him to defend multiple positions, slide between forward spots, and hit just enough threes to stay on the floor in playoff minutes. The Hawks, who have been tinkering around the edges of their roster, clearly believe that player isn’t gone.
They also clear a logjam on the perimeter. With Hield unable to crack the rotation consistently and Nembhard facing a crowded guard room, Atlanta turns two pieces that weren’t central to its plans into one versatile defender who, if he recovers his shot, can plug into a variety of lineups.
It’s the kind of under-the-radar move that rarely leads a highlight show in September. But inside a division where margins are thin and roles are constantly in flux, a specialist rediscovering form or a shooter finally given a green light can tilt a season.
Training camp will show which side read the moment better.
