Midseason report card: What grade do the Charlotte Hornets get?
It seems like only yesterday that the Charlotte Hornets were in San Antonio, Texas to begin the 2022-23 season, led by their new (old) head coach in Steve Clifford.
Fast forward roughly two and a half months and the season is halfway over. Charlotte’s opening night victory over the Spurs quickly faded as the Hornets lost a game, then two, then three, and now sit at 30 losses through the season’s first 41 games.
While the wins have been hard to come by for the purple and teal, there have been some bright spots. Rookie big man Mark Williams looks to be a promising piece for the future, while LaMelo Ball has wasted no time reminding fans how spectacular he is on the basketball court.
Of course, injuries may be the prevailing story line of the entire season and create an unanswerable “what if” that will follow this team forever. What if LaMelo Ball had never suffered an ankle injury before the regular season even began? What if Gordon Hayward had been able to put together his first healthy season with the Hornets? What if Cody Martin, Dennis Smith Jr., Terry Rozier, Kelly Oubre Jr., and Nick Richards had not all suffered injuries this season? Maybe the Hornets would have fared no better, but perhaps they would have been able to take advantage of a surprisingly open Eastern Conference and make a run at a postseason berth.
Perhaps the greatest irony of all is the newfound parity of the Eastern Conference; just one season after the Hornets finished with the most wins of any 10th seed since the 2001 Seattle SuperSonics, the Atlanta Hawks now occupy the 10th spot with a putrid 19-21 record.
Any rational observer would have to admit that the 2022 offseason did not put the Hornets in a position to succeed in the 2022-23 season. In a sense, the team’s hands have been tied the entire time due to the disaster that was the summer of 2022. This team was never set up to succeed, and their lack of success should come as a surprise to nobody.
However, the results speak for themselves. The Hornets are now 11-30 and are on pace to finish 22-60, which would be their worst record since 2012-13. Furthermore, it would mark the sixth-worst season in the 33 years of professional basketball in Charlotte, North Carolina. While the circumstances that created this are not entirely Charlotte’s own doing, this season has to be defined as a failure at this point, and the Hornets’ midseason report card reflects it as such.