Trade speculation has once again hit the Charlotte Hornets. For what feels like the hundredth straight season, someone is being put in trade rumors. Since LaMelo Ball is gone now, it's not him. It's the player he was traded for: Naz Reid.

There's been speculation that Reid doesn't want to be here, though that stems from nothing the player has said. The early friction between Charles Lee and Reid, which has more than gone away, fueled rumors as well.

And Reid is a player most contending teams would absolutely love to bring on. He's a proven asset with a versatile skillset. But the Hornets most likely aren't going to trade him, no matter what the early returns look like.

Jeff Peterson would ultimately pull the trigger on a deal, and his summer comments suggest that it's not really a consideration at all. At the 1:15 mark in the video, Peterson said he'd been targeting Reid "for years." After 11 games, is Peterson going to flip his grail for more draft picks?

Peterson also referred to "sustained success" for the Hornets, implying that he believes Reid is a big part of that. He specifically said that acquiring Reid and the TPE generated in the deal sets them up well to sustain success moving forward.

Regardless, since those comments were from months ago and things have changed, it wouldn't make sense to trade Reid. The return would probably be solid for a highly sought-after archetype of big man, but the Hornets don't need to keep stockpiling assets for Reid.

They need to see what this roster can be when it's fully healthy. When Kon Knueppel comes back, how does a five-man lineup of Coby White, Knueppel, Brandon Miller, Reid and Moussa Diabaté/Ryan Kalkbrenner work out?

That was the lineup they envisioned when they traded for Reid, and seeing it in action for literally a few minutes so far isn't enough data to go on. They simply don't know what it will all look like.

Plus, this season wasn't and probably still isn't (from a front office perspective) about bottoming out and getting another top prospect. It was about being competitive without LaMelo Ball so that in the future they can sustain winning.

Maybe that's not possible without Ball's playmaking, but the Hornets have to find out for themselves. Trading Reid would also be waving the white flag in an unprecedented way, making them the surefire laughingstock of a league that still has the Utah Jazz and Chicago Bulls.