So who is Timofey Mozgov and how does he fit in with the Charlotte Hornets' rotation?
The short answer: I don't think he really does.
And that makes you realize how much the Hornets wanted to end The Great Dwight Howard Experiment after only one year, shipping him to the Brooklyn Nets in a trade first reported by ESPN and confirmed by the Charlotte Observer.
Like Howard, Mozgov is a traditional, back-to-the-basket center in his early 30s in an NBA in which almost everyone else is now a 3-point-shooting greyhound. Like Howard but even more so, Mozgov is a plodder who is ridiculously overpaid _ and he's got two years left on his bad contract, while Howard only has one.
But unlike Howard, Mozgov should not be a locker-room issue.
This is a trade that is very hard to get excited about for any Charlotte Hornets fan _ and I'm not excited about it, either. I wish for the fans' sake that the Hornets could have gotten more for Howard _ who was traded from Charlotte exactly a year after the day he was traded to Charlotte. Then again, I'm not at all sorry to see him go, because the shotgun marriage of Howard to the Hornets just didn't work.
As for the trade itself, the only way that works for the Hornets is in an "addition by subtraction" sort of way.
Howard compiled great numbers last season for Charlotte (16.6 points and 12.5 rebounds per game) and yet he made absolutely no difference on the Hornets' bottom line. The team finished 36-46 the year before he came, and it finished an identical 36-46 in his one season in Charlotte. Howard is slated to make $23.8 million this season on an expiring contract.
Mozgov barely played in Brooklyn in the latter half of the year for a very bad Nets team, and he averaged only 4.2 points and 2.1 rebounds when he did. The 31-year-old Russian was publicly unhappy about how little he was used.
Mozgov has an awful contract _ a deal that was originally signed off on by Mitch Kupchak when he was with the Los Angeles Lakers in the free-agent frenzy of 2016.
And yet the Hornets were willing to take back that deal, which still has two years and almost $33 million left on it, with Kupchak as their new general manager. They did so and got rid of Howard, grabbed a couple of second-round draft picks _ one, the No. 45 pick, will be in play in Thursday night's NBA draft _ and likely avoided the luxury tax this season. The trade itself likely won't be made official until July, but it has been agreed to by all parties.
It shows you how much they wanted Howard out. But why?
