Despite the fact that the Hornets are rolling into the All-Star break on a heater, and have pretty much looked like a modern-day ‘Dream Team’ over their last three games, it’s safe to say the first half of the season has been a disappointment. Frankly, that’s putting it mildly.
The Hornets were deluding themselves and some fans into thinking this was a playoff team. Or at the very least, a team that would at the very least be competing for a play-in spot. This was not supposed to be one of the worst teams in the league or a team that was all but out of the playoff picture before Christmas.
So to say this season has been underwhelming so far would be a massive understatement. Furthermore, the recent, albeit brief run of good play has been a direct result of the owners deciding to blow up the team and go for a complete teardown and rebuild.
This, the team we now have, that has gone 3-0 is just what was leftover and was supposed to be a bad team that’s going through an overhaul. And yet they look miles better than the team ever did, even with the three players who were traded away, traded in theory, to make the team worse in the present, but better in the future.
So how did we get here? Where did it go so wrong? There were many contributing factors to the Hornets' 13-41 start to the season, a plethora of reasons why the team sits in 13th place in the Eastern Conference. But these have been the three biggest disappointments in the Hornets 2023-24 season thus far.
Effort and energy
Easily one of the most disappointing things about the Hornets this season is the way they looked on the floor. Too often the team just didn’t look like they were locked in and focused on winning. I know it’s a long season, and as the team goes south it can be easier to let down. But for this to be the case seemingly right out of the gate was brutal.
I’m not calling out any players specifically, but just look at how the team played for the first 51 games of the season, then look how they’ve played in the last three. The difference is jarring, and that it required gutting the team to see this much energy, effort, and enthusiasm is kind of pathetic.
Steve Clifford was brought in to coach defense, and there were almost no signs of it at any point this season until recently. I don’t think Cliff suddenly forgot how to coach so I’m going to pin this one mostly on the players, and generally it starts with veterans and trickles down.
Before the trade deadline, this was a very immature team and it showed on the floor. There needed to be connectivity, they never seemed to be playing as a unit. There were mental breakdowns left and right, and it looked like guys didn’t care at times.
It’s just disheartening to watch the Hornets every night and be forced to come away from the games wondering why they can’t at least win the 50/50 balls, outhustle the other teams, and control the things they can control. As a fan, this was extremely disappointing, especially when the players should have been fired up to prove to the league they were a playoff-caliber team.
Injuries
There are no excuses for the Hornets being as bad as they’ve been, but still, the injuries have been extremely disappointing and they’ve marred much of the season, and it starts with LaMelo Ball. It’s incredibly hard to break out as a team when your star player only appears in 40% of the games.
Ball has appeared in just 22 of the Hornets' 54 games this season due to injuries. Hopefully, he will be back after the All-Star game and we can finally see him with his new teammates, but that has yet to be confirmed. This team definitely wasn’t going to be good, but they never really had a chance without LaMelo.
Then we’ve got the Mark Williams debacle. Williams got off to a great start to his sophomore season, looking like this franchise's two-way center of the future. But then he went out with a back injury in early December and hasn’t been heard from since. The latest report was vague, but just said it wasn’t career-threatening and he would be reevaluated in 4 weeks.
That doesn’t exactly sound like an encouraging report for a 22-year-old 7-footer - or anyone for that matter. It’s been over two months since we’ve seen Williams play, and at this point, it’s fair to wonder if he’ll be back this season.
Veterans like Gordon Hayward and Cody Martin also missed a bunch of games with injuries. But the two young stars being out for so much time has been the real disappointment. Not only did it derail this season, but now it’s preventing us from getting a look at the young core. It’s hard to even determine if Williams is a part of that core.
I like what the Hornets have done recently and I’m excited about the future, but the rest of this season would have been a great opportunity to hand the keys to the three young, budding stars, and being robbed of that really hurts.
How long it took to get here
Like I said earlier, I’m very pleased with the direction the franchise has taken at this year’s trade deadline. But it’s incredibly disappointing that it took this long to get here. It was delusional to ever think this team’s ceiling was ever more than a play-in team. They should have started this rebuild years ago.
The team did well but undoubtedly could have traded players for higher values earlier in their contracts, Hayward especially. The Hornets could have and should have been collecting assets for years, and they’d be better off and much further along in the rebuilding process.
It’s better late than never, and this clarity is a good thing. But it should never have taken this bad of a season to get here, and to realize what should have been relatively obvious. The fact that the team owes a lottery-protected first-round pick in 2024 or 2025 from a trade in 2021 is a borderline disaster.
It will likely never convey, but still, it then turns into a 2nd round pick in 2026 and 2027. That’s an awfully high price to give up in the midst of a rebuild, and it’s a result of the owners and front office thinking they were building a winning team for far too long.
I’m turning a new leaf and I am optimistic about what’s happening now and the direction things are headed. But, I’ll be damned if not disappointed that we had to travel this path of pain to get to this point.