Charlotte Hornets general manager Jeff Peterson officially has a draft bust on his hands. In the 2024 NBA Draft, the Hornets selected Tidjane Salaun with the No. 6 pick. He was touted as a long-term, high-upside project, but the developmental runway has reached the end of the road.
Throughout his journey, he’s shown real flashes of great play in his limited time for the Hornets. But the painful reality is the Salaun project has officially slammed into a wall with multiple factors working against him.
The Hornets’ Tidjane Salaun Project Has Officially Fallen Apart
Salaun hasn’t impressed in the Summer League.
After two seasons of minimal progress, Salaun has started all four NBA Summer League games to date. This is unusual for any third-year player even to be playing in the summer, let alone start and play four games. By year two, if sophomores are even playing (i.e., Sion James, Ryan Kalkbrenner, and Liam McNeeley), they are only playing a few games before they get shut down.
Starting four games as a third-year player means the coaching staff and/or front office still need answers about the player. The glaring problem is that Salaun hasn’t answered many questions, and this should be a bold statement from the organization about how they feel about Salaun at this point.
In his fourth start against the Milwaukee Bucks, Salaun scored 21 points on 8-for-13 shooting (2-for-7 from three), three rebounds, zero assists, and four steals. While this was a sharp performance for Salaun, it was his first standout in four games. Add in the wrinkles that he’s still committing poor fouls and even the occasional air-balled open three-pointer, and the reservations about his overall game in the NBA are hard to ignore.
The truth is: he should be dominating in the Summer League at this point in his career, and he’s not.
The Depth Chart is Very Crowded With Offseason Additions
Not only has unremarkable play in his third Summer League stint affected his security on the roster, but just about every other player on the depth chart is considered startable over Salaun. After the LaMelo Ball trade, along with Josh Green and Miles Bridges, there have been multiple additions that impede Salaun’s path to minutes.
With Brandon Miller and Naz Reid presumptively locking down the starting forward spots, Salaun will be battling for rotational minutes. However, with the addition of Royce O’Neale from Phoenix, Hannes Steinbach via the 2026 NBA Draft, and Grant Williams still on the roster, those rotational minutes become scarce quickly.
This is all without mentioning McNeeley, who has arguably been the Hornets’ best Summer League player, taking up potential floor time. Even behind Moussa Diabate, the expectation is Kalkbrenner will play most of the center minutes behind him.
This leaves Salaun on the bench and only playable if there’s an injury or garbage-time minutes. Or another scenario is that he could still end up playing in the G League in his third NBA season as the No. 6 overall pick. There’s just been too many headscratcher moments throughout his young career to argue overtaking any of the other players in the rotation.
TIDJANE SALAUN WITH THE….
pic.twitter.com/zIaP1bJoEl— Kyle Ingram (@SnapshotKyle) December 4, 2025
Salaun’s Outlook is Grim With Charlotte
Given Salaun’s stalled growth and Charlotte’s evolving roster, his spot is in jeopardy. The Hornets are in a crucial reevaluation period as they shift toward building around Kon Knueppel and Miller, but that doesn’t mean Salaun is part of that plan.
Salaun hasn’t shown he’s progressing through his development timeline like other younger players have, making it hard to justify the investment. The Salaun project has officially collapsed, and it’s expected that his fourth-year team option for $10.4 million won’t be picked up when the time comes.
Photo Credit: Mike Watters, Imagn Images via Reuters Connect
