Twenty years ago today, professional basketball returned to Charlotte, North Carolina. Or at least the Charlotte Hornets did.
On January 10, 2013, the NBA Board of Governors officially approved the addition of the Charlotte Bobcats as the league’s 30th franchise. Charlotte had lost its own team, the original Hornets, to the city of New Orleans following the 2001-02 season. In part to avoid a potential lawsuit, the NBA awarded an expansion franchise to Charlotte and BET co-founder Robert Johnson that December.
Johnson’s group beat out a competing bid by Boston businessman Steve Belkin, who had Celtics Hall of Famer Larry Bird in his ownership group. Originally, the team was named the Bobcats, likely based on Johnson’s first name – Charlotte already had a “Panthers” team. They became the Hornets in 2014 after New Orleans changed their own name to the Pelicans.
A year after the expansion team began, Michael Jordan joined the team as a minority owner and head of business operations. He would buy the whole team from Johnson in 2010.
It’s hard to call the new franchise a success. Charlotte has only made the playoffs three times in its 19 seasons, and it doesn’t look like this year’s 11-30 team will do it either. They were swept in their first two trips to the playoffs, in 2010 and 2014, before taking the Miami Heat to seven games in 2016. In other words, it took them twelve years to win a playoff game.
They did make the new play-in tournament in 2021 and 2022 as the Eastern Conference’s 10th-place team but got blown out both years (114-117 and 132-103). Their most historic season was the lockout-shortened 2011-12 campaign, where Charlotte achieved the worst record by percentage in NBA history, going 7-59 (.109). Their reward for such a complete tank was getting the No. 2 pick in the draft, losing out on top pick Anthony Davis to their old friends in New Orleans.
The Hornets have had five All-Star selections in their two decades. LaMelo Ball made it last year, Kemba Walker was an All-Star from 2017-19, and Gerald Wallace is the lone player to wear a Bobcats jersey in the All-Star Game, in 2010.
Perhaps the third decade of the Hornets franchise will be better than what came before. At the very least, next January the franchise will be old enough to drink, which is necessary when watching this team.
