New Hornets cornerstone Brandon Miller lets the game come to him. Is that enough? (2024)

LAS VEGAS – By the fourth quarter of his fifth summer league game, it looked like Brandon Miller was ready to really go for his moment.

Miller, the Alabama product who was drafted second overall by the Charlotte Hornets in the 2023 NBA Draft, had a slow start to summer league. In his first four games, Miller recorded more fouls (24) than field goals made (16). But in Tuesday night’s outing against the Portland Trail Blazers, Miller started to get more comfortable. He had his first 20-point game of summer league locked up by the end of the third period.

And then, when he rebounded a missed 3 by Portland center Duop Reath, Miller’s eyes got big.

With Alabama head coach Nate Oats watching on, Miller dribbled into the front court. An unset screen by center Kai Jones still allowed Miller to glide by defending forward Justin Minaya. Miller saw Reath in the paint, with the latter’s feet above the restricted area. The Hornets’ rookie then decided to take off as if he was channeling 2013 Paul George against Chris “Birdman” Andersen.

Miller’s favorite player is George, and he wears the same number 24 that George wore when he posterized Andersen in Game 2 of the 2013 Eastern Conference Finals. But George got much, much closer to the basket than Miller did ten years later. Reath went with verticality, and Miller wound up looking like a botched animation in NBA 2K24.

That wound up being Miller’s last shot attempt in a game that still represented a positive step forward for the 20-year-old from Antioch, Tenn. The Hornets lost 97-93 to a Portland team playing without third overall pick Scoot Henderson, dropping Charlotte’s record to 0-3 in Las Vegas and 0-5 overall this summer after playing two games in Sacramento’s California Classic. But Miller scored a summer-high 26 points against the Trail Blazers, making all seven of his free throws, shooting 8-of-15 overall, going 3-of-6 on 3s and blocking two shots.

Though his dunk fail was his last shot of the game, Miller still completed more dunk attempts Tuesday night against the Trail Blazers (two) than the single make he totaled in his previous four games combined. One of the dunks was a similar set up to his fourth quarter miss, with Miller going left before forward Trevon Scott could set a screen and taking off as soon as his foot touched the paint, slamming it down before indecisive Portland center Ibou Badji could register a credible contest at the rim.

“I just think it was the mindset that he went into it,” said Charlotte summer league head coach Marlon Garnett. “I thought he was a little bit more, kind of forceful, I guess is a better word. He was a little bit forceful and had a nice intent about what he wanted to do. I like the way he plays on the offensive end. He stays within himself. He makes the right play. But it was good to see him like really try to look for his own a little bit and kind of get going.”

Miller’s quest to play the right way hasn’t been rewarded with summer league wins yet, and his field goal percentage was an unkind 33.3 percent prior to his Tuesday night breakout. But he is showing an understanding of taking care of the ball and knowing where it needs to go. Miller had only one turnover against the Trail Blazers, and he has compiled a 17:13 assist-turnover ratio in five summer league games. For perspective, George had a 10:24 assist-turnover ratio in five summer league games with the Pacers in Orlando back in 2010.

“I’ve preached all the time, I kind of let the game come to me,” Miller said Tuesday night. “I felt like I was kind of put in the right places to get up comfortable shots, just that, and, then, my teammates building my confidence up. Just take tough shots like that in games like this, a great atmosphere.”

Miller previously mentioned letting the game come to him after his highly-anticipated matchup against top overall pick Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs Friday night. In the Hornets’ summer league game before that, a 98-83 loss to the Golden State Warriors in Sacramento, Miller attempted only four field goals and one free throw in just over 28 minutes of play. He took 15 shots against the Spurs, making just five in what was a remarkably poor game offensively for both teams. At one point, Wembanyama blocked one of Miller’s 3-point attempts.

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It was the kind of game where, despite the uptick in aggression, Miller’s areas of improvement were laid bare. He will have to show that he can consistently beat his man and get to the rim instead of allowing defenders to sit on his jump shot.

“I think as I let the game come to me, I think just more shots came,” Miller said Friday night after Wembanyama’s Spurs beat the Hornets. “The ball kind of found my hands to kind of take shots like that.”

One player who can help Miller’s transition to the NBA is fellow Hornets first-round pick and Brad Beal Elite alum Nick Smith Jr., selected 27th overall in last month’s draft out of Arkansas. Smith, a college shooting guard who Miller still chides for not going to Alabama, is getting heavy reps at point guard, a position Smith says he hasn’t played since high school. That was evident Tuesday night, with Smith being unhappy about his six turnovers to only three assists.

But one of the reasons Miller did not have a shot in the last five minutes of Tuesday’s game was because he recognized that Smith was cooking the Trail Blazers. Though 2022 lottery pick Shaedon Sharpe allowed Portland to hold on for a win, Smith scored 16 of his game-high 33 points in the fourth quarter, including Charlotte’s last 12 points in the final 2:40 of play. At one point, Smith called for Miller to screen for him, basically asking for the ankles of Portland’s Jabari Walker on a switch. Smith mixed Walker for an isolation bucket, one of four straight possessions down the stretch that ended in a Smith field goal.

“I mean, you see it,” said Smith Tuesday night about the chemistry he has with Miller. “We’re still building on a lot of things from high school. We haven’t played with each other in a year or something like that. But we’re just trying to learn the terminologies and stuff like that. We’re getting it going, we just got to come out with a win.”

“I kind of felt like at the end, Nick should have had the ball more, really trying to get it to him,” Miller said of Smith Tuesday. “It’s nothing but great things between us two. It’s like my brother, man. We’ll argue, then we’re right back cool three minutes after. So, I mean, it’s kind of easy with him.”

Tuesday night’s game was Miller’s first with more field goals than fouls. Even then, he had five fouls, though four came in a bucket-less fourth quarter. Garnett has praised Miller for his willingness to defend, as evidenced by the latter’s aforementioned two blocks against Portland, six total steals in five summer games and 6.8 rebounds per game. But Miller won’t be allotted ten fouls per game after summer league ends, meaning he must adjust to the best the league has to offer at the big wing position.

“That’s one of the narratives with him coming out of college, is that we know that he can defend,” Garnett said of Miller Tuesday night. “But he’s going to have to be a little bit smarter. Obviously, in summer league, you get 10 fouls. So, he’s able to ramp up that aggressiveness. But, from the standpoint of just being a little bit more crisp and not being as handsy, he can’t wrap around on ball screens or whatever. So, you got to anticipate certain situations and beat guys to the play. You can’t be reactionary, because when you’re reactionary, you’re going to be late to the play, and then it’s probably going to equate to a foul. But the tools that he has with his length, the way he moves his feet, I’m not concerned. He’s a good defender. There’s just a little bit of technique tweaks here and there, and he’s going to be fine.”

Miller enters his rookie season with a team featuring a lot of pieces that have to come together. He basically takes the roster spot of Kelly Oubre Jr., who averaged a career-high 20.3 points per game last season. There are already a lot of shots to go around with the returns of 2022 All-Star point guard LaMelo Ball, shooting guard Terry Rozier, incumbent small forward Gordon Hayward, and power forward Miles Bridges, who will be suspended the first 10 games of next season after pleading no contest to a felony domestic violence charge. Last year’s starting power forward, PJ Washington, is still a restricted free agent. Mark Williams and Nick Richards are the centers. Young recent first-round picks like Jones and 2021 lottery pick James Bouknight have not panned out.

For now, all Miller can do is focus on getting himself ready for his rookie season. He doesn’t have to be the savior for a Charlotte franchise that hasn’t made the playoffs in seven years and hasn’t won a playoff series in over two decades. He can’t worry about being picked ahead of everyone except Wembanyama. Only progressing within himself will suffice for now — and maybe leaving Las Vegas with a win.

“I think it’s just buying in on defense, trying to get the stops that we need, plays a big part in the basketball game today,” Miller says. “As you see, game can turn real fast. Just one possession.”

(Top photo of Brandon Miller: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)

Law Murray is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the LA Clippers. Prior to joining The Athletic, he was an NBA editor at ESPN, a researcher at NFL Media and a contributor to DrewLeague.com and ClipperBlog. Law is from Philadelphia, Pa., and is a graduate of California University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California. Follow Law on Twitter @LawMurrayTheNU