How the Hornets can learn from the mistakes of the past
By Quinn Everts
It is June of 2014. The Charlotte Bobcats just made the playoffs for the second time in franchise history. Their postseason run was actually more of a brisk walk, as they were unceremoniously swept out of round one by the two-time defending champion Miami Heat. Nonetheless, things are looking relatively bright in Charlotte for the first time since NBA basketball returned to the Queen City a decade ago.
Young point guard Kemba Walker appears to be on a fast-track to NBA stardom. Steve Clifford, after years of assistant coaching jobs around the league, excelled in his first season at the helm of the Bobcats, finishing fourth in Coach of the Year voting. Recent lottery picks Cody Zeller and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist might never live up to the lofty expectations associated with their draft spots (number four and number two, respectively) but have both shown flashes that point towards lengthy and productive NBA careers.
In next month’s draft, the soon–again–to-be Hornets will own two first-round picks, including Detroit’s lottery pick (#9) which was sent to Charlotte as part of the Ben Gordon / Corey Magette swap from 2012.
The team has draft capital, a budding young star, a flashy “new” brand, and a surplus of money to spend in the upcoming offseason and beyond. It feels odd to say, but after years of turmoil, Charlotte is in prime position to build a legit small-market contender in the East. Who knows; five years from now, they might be on top of the league.
June 2019. Wait…Why is Steve Clifford in Florida? Why is Kemba wearing so much green? Why is Nicolas Batum diving into a pool of money like Scrooge McDuck? Who did the team select with all of those draft picks? Where are the championship banners? What happened?
What Did Happen?
Simply put, the Hornets got stuck in NBA Purgatory. Not good enough to make the playoffs consistently, but not quite bad enough to earn top draft picks for their futility. Five years removed from what appeared to be the beginning of a fun, successful era in Charlotte, the team was forced to blow up their roster, and look to begin a full-on rebuild. Things grew dire in a hurry. But what caused this collapse? How did a team with wells of positive momentum so quickly become a middling franchise with no attractive assets, no promising young talent, no money, and no direction? And why does any of this matter in 2022?
These questions all have a range of answers, many of which are convoluted, strange, and not nearly interesting enough to fully analyze. But the short answer of “how?” this happened has much to do with poor asset management from the Hornets front office. Ranging from the draft, where Charlotte selected Frank Kaminsky over Devin Booker in 2015 and Malik Monk over Donovan Mitchell in 2017– to free agency, where the Hornets paid Nic Batum $125 million dollars, Marvin Williams $54 million (had to double-check that!) and seemed to have an obsession with acquiring middle-of-the-road veterans. Missing in the draft, overpaying underproductive players through the open market, and the franchise’s refusal to take big swings via trade, led to, essentially, a dead end.
The short answer of “why on Earth does this matter in 2022?” relates to the relative success of the new-age Charlotte Hornets, who have now reached a similar achievement peak to the best Hornets teams of the mid-to-late 2010s. Hence, the next steps the franchise takes are essential to eluding Purgatory. Owner Michael Jordan and GM Mitch Kupchak must avoid staying stagnant, and a great way to do that is by using Charlotte’s mistakes from their last, failed “rebuild” as a blueprint for the future.
To the present we go!
September 2022: Our journey into the past has concluded, and we’ve returned to modern day. Today, the Charlotte Hornets have a point guard on the fast track to NBA stardom, some talented young role players around him, and a few tradable assets in the form of draft picks and veteran players on reasonable contracts. This all sounds kind of familiar. Who’s the Hornets coach now? Ah… Right.
The situation for the Hornets isn’t exactly the same now as it was in 2014: LaMelo Ball has a higher ceiling than any other Hornets/Bobcats player since 2004, the Hornets have a different General Manager than they did in 2014, and both Gordon Hayward and Terry Rozier would have been the second-best players on many iterations of Hornet teams of the past. But the league is so talented, that the space Charlotte occupies right now– a borderline playoff team with an obvious ceiling, but opportunities to break through that ceiling if the front office is clever with their assets– is very familiar.
(As a note, this piece assumes that Miles Bridges is no longer a part of the Charlotte Hornets organization. If he does return, the team has an entirely different set of issues to address.)
The next question, naturally, is: what are the next steps? How does this franchise make a leap from being a fine team, to being one that regularly makes deep playoff runs? Simply asserting that the Hornets should operate differently now than they did almost a decade ago isn’t productive. So, let’s make a list of rules the Hornets should follow, as they look to get over the hump of mediocrity and align themselves with the powers of the NBA.