Breaking News: Hornets Sell 45th Pick to Knicks

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Published: June 23, 2011

The speculation on who the Hornets would draft at number 45 has ended. Just after 10 pm central time Dell Demps came into the media room at the Hornets Headquarters and announced that the team would be selling the pick to the New York Knicks. The reaction wasn’t exactly enthusiastic, since we had been here over four hours waiting for some news.

Am I happy about it? Not really, but I doubt anything that happened with the 45th pick today was going to make me particularly thrilled. It would have been a lot of fun to talk about a new player, and get some cool interviews with him, but in the end it’s better that the Hornets use the money on players that they think will help them.

Dell didn’t think anyone available can help us as much as a few ducats can, and that’s a fairly reasonable assumption considering how weak the draft was this year. If money is what the team needs to take the next step, then this was the obvious decision. Ryan has repeatedly posted that the odds of getting a 6th man type player or better so late in the draft are only around 13%, and the fact that he Dell got such good value for such a late pick in a down NBA economy just makes the decision that much more defensible for both the Hornets and their fans.

I’m sure Dell has nothing personally against Josh Harrellson, but would just rather the team have 750,000 right now.

Talk it up in here or at HornetsReport.

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