Charlotte Hornets: 15 greatest scorers of all-time

• 12.0 PPG, 4,701 points, 6 seasons
• 44.3 career field goal percentage w/Charlotte
• 30.9 career 3-point percentage w/Charlotte
• 391 career games, 292 career starts w/Charlotte

Gerald Henderson Jr. comes from good basketball genes. His father Gerald Henderson Sr. was a three-time NBA Champion with the Boston Celtics and Detroit Pistons during his 13-year NBA career out of VCU. The younger Henderson starred for the Duke Blue Devils before playing professionally in Charlotte.

Henderson was the No. 12 overall pick in the 2009 NBA Draft by the then-Bobcats after his junior season at Duke. He was coming off a First-Team All-ACC and Third-Team All-American showing as a third-year player for the Blue Devils. With his sound scoring ability, it was only natural that the expansion-era Bobcats would draft a guy cultivated in their own fertile basketball soil.

Henderson spent his first six of eight NBA seasons in the Queen City, playing for the professional franchise known as the Bobcats for five and the newly re-branded Hornets for one in 2014-15. Initially, Henderson struggled to find his footing on a bad Bobcats team during his first two years in the league.

Despite playing for one of the worst teams in NBA history in the 2011-12 Bobcats, who won just seven games in the strike-shortened season, Henderson did eventually break out as a player. He averaged 15.1 points per game on 45.9 percent shooting from the field. Henderson would then average double figures in scoring in the next three seasons through the 2014-15 campaign.

Henderson could be counted on to start at shooting guard for the Bobcats/Hornets in his six years with the team. He averaged 12.0 points per game on 44.3 percent shooting from the field. While he wasn’t a decent 3-point shooter (30.9 percent behind the arc in Charlotte), he was a huge part of the 2013-14 team that made it to the Eastern Conference Playoffs.

Charlotte was expected to be a perennial playoff team after what was the final year being known as the Bobcats. However, Charlotte struggled mightily in his first season back to being known as the Hornets. This would also be Henderson’s last season with the club.

Henderson would be traded to the Portland Trail Blazers alongside big man Noah Vonleh in the Nicolas Batum deal. After spending one year with the Trail Blazers, he would go on to sign a multi-year deal with the Philadelphia 76ers. However, Henderson would be waived by the 76ers in June 2017. He hasn’t played for an NBA team since.

Overall, Henderson scored 4,701 points for the Bobcats/Hornets in his half-dozen seasons in the Queen City. Though never the player he was while at Duke, he played in 391 games for the club, making 292 starts. Longevity and a respectable career field goal percentage of 44.3 is enough to have Henderson coming in at No. 13 on this all-time list of Charlottean professional scorers.