He wasn’t Wemby. But it’s hard to overstate Brandon Miller’s historic Hornets season

Nick Smith Jr. knew so long as “you keep it in the gym, he can go get it.” He’d seen it before. And even still, there were times this season when Smith would watch Brandon Miller — the Charlotte Hornets’ brilliantly breezy rookie who he’s known since he was 15 — and shake his head in amazement.

“We are doing a drill, somebody will throw him a lob, and he’ll just casually do a 360,” Smith told reporters during exit interviews Monday.

He’d later add with a chuckle: “I’ve seen it before from him. But yeah, it’s the same reaction it’s always got. Just ... Damn. You know what I’m saying?”

Ask anyone in the Hornets’ locker room to review Miller’s rookie season, and it’s hard to overstate how good it was. Miles Bridges said he “doesn’t think there’s a ceiling” for Miller. Seth Curry said he knew Miller was good before he arrived in Charlotte, but “then I got here” and learned “the sky’s the limit.”

Outgoing head coach Steve Clifford, an NBA veteran who’s tried his best to resist hyperbole during Miller’s historic rookie season, was most complimentary of all: “Listen,” he said, “I was excited about him last year (when we drafted him), and he’s a better player already than I thought he could be.”

Or, in other words:

Damn.

It’s true Miller wasn’t and isn’t Victor Wembanyama, the 7-foot-4 French phenom who will almost assuredly win Rookie of the Year this month and who was one ping-pong ball-pluck away from being a Charlotte Hornet in July. It’s also true that by pretty much every metric, the 2023-24 season was a disappointing one. The team finished 21-61, marking its seventh losing season in eight years and its lowest win total since its Bobcat days. Injuries ravaged the roster, which included guard LaMelo Ball, who signed the most lucrative contract in Charlotte pro sports history before the season. A bulk of the team’s offense was traded away not a season after Michael Jordan sold his majority stake in the franchise, including Gordon Hayward and PJ Washington and Terry Rozier.

But what (or who) is also the truth?

Miller.

Even if he deflects it.

“All the credit goes to my teammates and my coaches for believing in me, putting me in the right spaces,” Miller said, “and from the jump just boosting my confidence to be the young leader that I am.”

Recapping Brandon Miller’s many milestones

Include Miller in the retelling of the 2023-24 season, and realize that while Miller wasn’t Wembanyama, he showed flashes that might make Charlotte a victor nonetheless.

He won Eastern Conference Rookie of the Month in January. He posted a career-high 35 points on Feb. 4 to become the first rookie and only the fourth player in franchise history to post 10 field goals, five 3s and 10 free throws in a game. By Feb. 5 he became the fourth-fastest player in NBA history to reach 100 3-pointers — taking 43 games to do so — only behind Luka Doncic (42), Keegan Murray (42) and Lauri Markkanen (41). He was named to the Rising Stars event All-Star Weekend. He notched another Rookie of the Month honor in February and another in March. He had a game that only Steph Curry has replicated in April. And by season’s end, he led all rookies in 3-pointers per game (2.5) and total 3s (184), and did so after playing in a team-most 74 games (ahead of Miles Bridges at 69) — eluding the oft-discussed “rookie wall” and injury bug all at once.

All in all, he averaged 17.3 points, 4.3 rebounds and 2.4 assists at 32.2 minutes per game.

Miller said there are plenty of things he needs to do this offseason to add to his game. Getting stronger, building out his lanky 6-foot-7, 200-pound frame, is among them.

But take it from veterans who were acquired by the Hornets this season:

His rookie year was nothing short of special.

“I see more comparisons with PG (Paul George)“ — who Miller claims as his “GOAT,” for what it’s worth — “just because Jayson (Tatum) is his own kind of category because he’s 6-10 and has those long arms, is different, more fluid,” said Grant Williams, the former Celtic who was asked to compare Miller to Tatum. “But Brandon has an ability to continue to grow in this league and understand where his spots are, how comfortable he can get with certain shots, which shots are good shots versus bad, where he can really be one of those elite players, elite scorers, in the league.

“And also the thing that I’d say with Brandon as he continues to develop is his mentality. It’s one of the best I’ve been around.”

Said Curry: “He can be whatever he wants to be. I see All-NBA, perennial All Star, possible MVP consideration in his future. All the talent, all the size, the competitive nature. I think he’s going to work on his game and add stuff every year. So I’m excited to see him grow.”

His path to Charlotte great wasn’t guaranteed

Perhaps the most noteworthy part of Miller’s first season was that it wasn’t always clear he’d be this kind of guy. He started the season as a sixth man, encouraged to shoot but mostly deferential to Rozier and Ball and the rest of the team’s older guard.

Go back further, and fans were lukewarm about the pick of him at No. 2 to begin with. Scoot Henderson was nationally considered the safer bet on the court, and off-the-court, Miller was still embroiled in a high-profile incident that resulted in tragedy when Miller was still a freshman at Alabama. In February 2023, police said Miller brought a teammate the handgun that was later used to kill Jamea Jonae Harris, 23, on Jan. 15, 2023. Miller was not charged with a crime. Amid all this, too, Miller learned his mother, Yolanda, had breast cancer.

Those forces made for a strangely muted introductory press conference the day after the draft on the main concourse of Spectrum Center. That day, the team and Miller himself offered several assurances. Kupchak said the team did a “good job of investigating” and that they were “comfortable going with Brandon Miller on and off the court.” Darrell Miller, Brandon’s father, addressed the situation by saying that his son needed to be “a lot more careful who you choose as a friend.” Yolanda told The Charlotte Observer that day that she was cancer-free and that the family has “moved on” from the once-disconcerting diagnosis.

It’s been about 10 months since that day — the day the Hornets and the city of Charlotte were introduced to Miller. And, despite the team’s woes, the Hornets found itself on Monday, the day of exit interviews, in a relatively upbeat mood.

They felt hopeful.

A lot of that has to do with the prospects of injured players coming back, like Ball and Williams and Cody Martin. (Clifford said that when completely healthy, “it’s hard not to feel good” about the team’s roster.)

A lot of that, too, had to do with the mix of veterans in the locker room with the additions of Grant Williams and Seth Curry and others.

But that hope, in one way or another, comes back to the rookie the Hornets got right — Charlotte’s soft-spoken, smiley, silky smooth scorer.

It comes back to Miller.

“When Charlotte drafted him, and we went to Charlotte that next morning after the draft, that’s what we said: ‘Just give him time,’” Darrell Miller, Brandon’s father, told The Charlotte Observer on Monday. “Get to know Brandon, and you guys are going to love him.”

The father said this pridefully, presciently. And yet still, when asked how it felt to reflect on his son’s ascension from sixth-man, to starter, to leading scorer — the kind of season no one seemed to be able to overstate — he chuckled.

“We always thought that it was going to happen,” Darrell said.

“Though, not this fast.”

Rod Boone contributed to this report.