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Kemba Walker piled on 35 points that included a 20-point second quarter and the Charlotte Hornets still fell to the Houston Rockets on Wednesday 118-113.
Walker has had his best campaign of his career so far in the 2018-19 season. He is averaging a career-high 25 points a game and got to be a starter in the All-Star Game which was held in the city he plays for in Charlotte. However, the Hornets still find themselves five games under .500 barely hanging on to the eighth seed in the East.
Walker is a free agent at the season's end and it will be curious to see if he re-signs with the Hornets or not because it seems like Walker's prime is being used up in a non-winning situation.
Walker has been an All-Star in the last three seasons and the best year the Bobcats/Hornets have had in his eight seasons is the 2015-16 season. That year saw the Hornets win 48 games which only netted them a four-way tie for the 3rd seed in which the Hornets got the short end of the tiebreaker and got the sixth seed in the 2016 playoffs, losing in seven games to the Miami Heat.
If the Hornets were to hold on to the eighth seed in the East (the Magic are only one game back of the Hornets, who lead the Southeast division) it would be only the third time in his career that Walker would make the playoffs in eight seasons.
A problem for the Hornets is that Jeremy Lamb is their second-highest scorer and if Kemba Walker wants to stay in Charlotte he better hope the Hornets can build something around him that is better than Jeremy Lamb and Nicolas Batum.
Kemba Walker is a very good player and he is being overlooked because the Hornets do not have a team around him in order for him to make a deep run in the playoffs. The Pacers were able to do with Victor Oladipo and still find themselves near the top of the East in his absence.
I do not want to advocate for Kemba Walker to leave Charlotte, but with his free agency pending it should be asked if Walker trusts the Hornets front office to turn it around if he were to re-sign on a long term basis.
