Why Are The Charlotte Hornets Always Bad?

Why Are The Charlotte Hornets Always Bad?

The Charlotte Hornets just missed the playoffs for the ninth year in a row. And so far, they haven’t done much in the off season to improve their roster. So, it feels like every year you can basically pencil them in for being a lottery team. You know, you’re the guy who’s more into like stocks and whatnot. Is there a way to short an NBA team? Cuz if there is, I’m going to do it with the Hornets. Yeah, you’d be rich. Before [Music] [Music] we start talking about why the Hornets are always bad, please give the video a like, subscribe to the channel, and hit the notification bell so you never miss out on any new videos. But first, a word reasons the Hornets have been terrible, let’s do a quick recap of the franchise since basketball returned to Charlotte in 2004. Because before, you know, the Charlotte Hornets we know now, there was the Charlotte Hornets in the ’90s and they were pretty damn good, at least for their short stint there. You had Alonzo Mourning, Larry Johnson, guys like Kendall Gil, Mugsy Bogues. But when basketball left Charlotte after the Hornets departure, the Bobcats, they were down at the bottom of the totem pole. You know, Bobcats, that’s a terrible name. High School Musical name. I mean, yeah, it just is. I mean, it’s always tough as an expansion franchise. It doesn’t matter the sport. You do get Jerald Wallace in the expansion draft. I mean, he’d be a key piece for them over the next few seasons. You trade up in the 04 draft and you select a Mecca Okafor out of Yukon. I mean, he won rookie of the year, looked very promising early on, but he basically just ended up being a role player. You also take fat ass Raymond Felen in the 2005 draft. So, you know, you got a decent group of young players to start out with, but you know, he still lacked the all-star like superstar level player early on. But after 5 years of not making the playoffs, the Bobcats finally got their first playoff birth in 2010. Gerald Wallace made his first and only all-star appearance, and he even finished third in defensive player of the year voting. Steven Jackson as well proved to be a huge pickup for them. But I mean, the ceiling for a team led by Steven Jackson and Gerald Wallace pretty damn low. And the Bobcats were unceremoniously swept out of the playoffs by Dwight and the Magic. And after that, they had a bad start to the next season and they basically just blew it up from there. Raymond Felton signed with the Knicks. Gerald Wallace was traded mid-season to the Blazers. And Steven Jackson was traded shortly after as well. So coming off your first playoff appearance, you win 34 games, you end up with the ninth pick in the draft. Give him credit here. You take Kemba Walker out of Yukon. Honestly, maybe the best draft pick in franchise history considering you got him at nine. Yeah, at least like this franchise since return in 2004. I would have to agree. But immediately after getting him, the Bobcats would have the worst season in NBA history. At least by win percentage, you go 7 and 59 in the lockout shorten season. I think by win percentage and by total wins because it’s a shortened season. Yeah. But this could have been a blessing in disguise because one of the best prospects we had ever seen was entering the draft and Anthony Davis. But of course with the luck the Bobcats had, the Hornets won the draft lottery. Not the Hornets we know of today, but the Hornets who had left to New Orleans. So, they were stuck with the second pick and they didn’t get Anthony Davis out of Kentucky. They drafted his teammate, Michael Kidd Gilchrist, who’s best known for having the worst shooting form in NBA history. Oh, it’s terrible. Like, I don’t get it. It’s not even like his elbow is like sticking out like to the right cuz he’s right here. It’s the opposite way. Makes no sense. I don’t get how he does it. I mean, just look at this. What is that? It’s terrible. Like Kid Gilchrist to me, he seems like the last remnant of like early 2000s basketball where teams just wanted to draft like pure athletes rather than guys that actually could play ball and defensive guys. Yeah. They wanted like defensive guys, athletes, dunkers. Like by the 2010s, it was like, “Oh, no. You need guys who can dribble, who can pass, who can shoot.” Kid goers could do none of that. To give the Bobcats credit though, they did quickly turn things around. I mean, in 2013, they were still awful. They won 21 games. Still tripled their wins. Yeah, that’s pretty good. And two seasons after having the worst season in NBA history. He actually returned to the playoffs, credit to Steve Clifford, did a terrific job there. Kembbo was developing into a future star. And then you had Al Jefferson, the addition of him. A fantastic season he had, but not surprisingly, the Bobcats were swept this time to the Heedles. And the series most well known for LeBron just staring down Jordan on a breakaway dunk. I would say a series only remembered for LeBron staring down. on that Doug. Exactly. 2015 though, Charlotte rebranded back to the Hornets. They were finally able to do so after the Hornets in New Orleans had rebranded to the Pelicans. The Hornets just a much better name than the Bobcats. Again, like I said, like create a team, high school music. Like that’s what it feels like to me. Like it’s just such a boring name for a professional team. So, it was nice to see them get the Hornets branding back. They would regress and miss the playoffs in 2015, but they once again returned in 2016, and this is the closest they’ve come to getting a playoff series win. They match up with the Heat in round one. At one point, even led the series three games to two after a game five win in Miami, but they dropped game six on their home floor. Ultimately would go out in seven. And to this day is the best season that the Bobcats/ Hornets have had since they rejoined the NBA in 2004. That’s so sad. a first round exit in seven games to a very whatever Miami Heat team post LeBron. For the next three seasons, Kembbo was great. He was an all-star every season, but he just had no supporting cast around him. They missed the playoffs every single year during that stretch. So, he eventually dips to Boston. And again, Charlotte becomes one of the worst teams in the league. But they did get the third pick in the 2020 draft. It was one of those drafts where, you know, there was three really good prospects. And with the third pick, you take LaMelo Ball. Obviously, a really good pick. LaMelo’s been great when he’s healthy, just struggle to stay healthy and it’s just really sad to see. But once again, you’re missing out on a generational prospect because Anthony Edwards goes first to the Timberwolves. Still though, LaMelo wins rookie of the year in 2021. You had some other promising young players. Miles Bridges was promising at the time at least. PJ Washington, so maybe this could be the core that at least just wins a playoff series. The Hornets would make the playin that season and the next, but they lost the first playin game both times. And since then they’ve done all Yeah. I mean, LaMelo’s been great, but he struggles to stay healthy. And honestly, I question whether or not he’s like a quote unquote winning player or not. I would agree. Honestly. Yeah. But once again, the Hornets miss out on a generational prospect when they got the second pick in the 2023 draft. Of course, Wimby goes number one to the Spurs. Hornets take Brandon Miller at number two. Not a bad pick, but he ain’t Wimby, obviously. And then this year, once again, Hornets are terrible. Finish with the third worst record in the NBA. Win only 19 games. once again miss out on a generational prospect as Dallas wins the lottery, gets Cooper flag. Hornets end up with the fourth pick and they draft Khan Canuple out of Duke. Is that how you pronounce his name? I think something like that. Something like that. Yeah. I mean like it kind of feels like the AD situation. Like you don’t get him, you get his teammate, right? I I mean maybe he could be good. We watch Duke this year. We don’t watch a ton of college basketball, but kind of feels like that situation once again. And besides that, haven’t done a ton this off season to improve the roster. I mean, you trade for Colin Ston, you send out Mark Williams for some picks. So, at least right now, you can basically pencil them in as a lottery team once again. My shorts looking good, right? So, now that you have that recap, let’s talk about the reasons why this franchise has been so damn bad. So, first and most obvious reason the Hornets have been bad is they just suck at building a good roster of basketball players. I mean, say what you want about Jordan as like a player and like a business executive, as like a philanthropist or whatever. Dude can’t draft worth a he can’t draft to save his [ __ ] life. I mean, 04 they take a mecha for second pick. Honestly, not that bad. Just sucks that Orlando preferred Dwight Howard when a lot of people were saying they should take four. They take Dwight. Maybe this is all different, but who knows? 2005, you get fat ass Raymond Felton with the fifth pick. Again, fine considering where he’s taken. 2006 though, you take Adam Morrison with the third overall pick. That’s a swing and a miss. Yeah. I mean, I love Gonzaga basketball. I love Adam Morrison. He got me into Gonzaga. I was heartbroken when they lost to UCLA in 2006. So was he. I was crying as much as he was, to be honest, as a young kid. But you could have Brandon Roy, you could add Rudy Gay. And Adam Morrison, despite like a decent rookie year, was terrible for Charlotte. 2007 you traded the eighth pick to Golden State for Jason Richardson. You could add Joe Kim Noah who went the pick after. 2008 you take DJ Augustine at nine. Brook Lopez again went the pick after that. So you’re missing out on another future all-star center. 2009 you take Gerald Henderson with a 12th pick. Not really going to hate on that. Gerald Henderson he was fine there. But Drew Holiday did go a bit later. Still though not a terrible pick. Like I said 2010 you didn’t have your pick. 2011 you take Kemba at nine their best pick in my opinion given where you took him and how many all-star teams he made sure let Clay and Kawawaii go shortly after that but Kemba three-time all-star led them to the playoffs so that was fine 2012 as mentioned Michael kid Gilchrist at number two horrible horrible Bradley Beal goes three Dame goes six even could have had like Drummond or Harrison Barnes would have been way better absolutely 2013 they decided a 610 white power forward who couldn’t shoot was the future of the NBA when they took Cody Zeller. I mean, look, this draft sucks, but CJ was still on the board. Obviously, Giannis was still on the board and you walk out with Cody Zeller. So, not great. 2014, you take Noah Vonlay at nine. Zack Lavine went four picks later, but again, not a very deep draft, so whatever. 2015, again, they’re like American white power forward from the Big 10 who also wears a red uniform in college. They took Frank Kamitzky out of Indiana with the ninth pick. Frank the Tank, right? But you know, Miles Turner and Devin Booker went the next five picks, so you miss on that one. 2016, you trade your pick, so you don’t got it. 2017, you take Malik Monk at 11, Donovan Mitchell, and Bamit shortly after this. I mean, Malik Monk’s a good player, but he’s had a good career, mostly not with the Hornets. So, 2018, this is the big one. You take Shay Gildas Alexander and then you trade him to the Clippers for Miles Bridges. There’s not much we even need to say after that. At least the Clippers can go to bed at night knowing they’re not the only team that traded a future MVP. Sure. They got one season of Shay. Exactly. Right. At least got to see him put the uniform on instead of just the hat. 2019, you take PJ Washington at 12. Not that bad, but Tyler Hero goes the very next pick. 2020, you get LaMelo with the third pick. Look, I I have my questions about him, but he’s clearly the best player they could have selected there. 2021 you take James Book Knight at 11, the guy who was most well known for driving drunk and passing out with a gun and a bag of Doritos. So that was a first round pick they spent on that guy. Yeah, that about again says all you need to know. 2022 you take Mark Williams at 15. Pretty good pick. You know, you flip him for some future first. 2023 you take Brandon Miller over Scoot Henderson. I couldn’t believe it. Future MVP Scoot Henderson. A baffling pick when you think about it. In all seriousness though, Amen Thompson was the guy to take there. Assar Thompson too. Yeah, even Assar would have been a much better pick. That being said though, Brandon Miller still early on had a really good rookie season at least. 2024 to Jane Saloon. Is that how you say it? Maybe. No disrespect to him. Didn’t do much his rookie year, but don’t know how to pronounce your name. And again, that says about all you need to know. And most recently, we just touched on it. Conapple fourth this year. Like, we’ll see how it shakes out. I just have one suggestion to the Hornets marketing team. Can we get like a section in the Hornets stadium that’s just all like Conpple fans that call themselves the Communists? Okay. I feel like there’s a great marketing opportunity there that you shouldn’t pass up. Okay. So, now that we’ve gone over them in the draft, let’s talk about, you know, trades in free agency. Honestly, in trades, there haven’t been like too many boneheaded trades. We’ll give them that. There was the trade where they sent Gerald Wallace to the Blazers. Got back basically nothing. got back like Joel Presbilla, some future first, which were pretty bad picks, and like Dante Cunningham, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, they did make the deal recently to send PJ Washington to Dallas and they got back Dallas’s 2027 first round pick. I mean, given that the Mavericks traded Luca, they’re an older team. That could be a good pick there. So, I mean, given the fact that the NBA is apparently rigged, it could be number one. Exactly. We never know. We never know. And then they made a couple moves this off season like we said bringing in Cole Ston. So like unless we’re missing something, they haven’t been too bad with trades but also haven’t done much either. Yeah. But when it comes to free agency, boy, they’re terrible. Look, I I get it. They’re a small market. You got to overpay guys at times. But given Nicholas Batum 5 years, $120 million is batshit insane. It’s such a bad contract that honestly when I saw it happen at the time, I felt better about the four-year $70 million contract we gave to Evan Turner. That’s wild. Like that’s how bad this was. Like yeah, this is back in 2016. The cap was way lower. So 5 years, $120 million for a role player might not sound too terrible nowadays. Back then it was lunacy. That off season, you also give Marvin Williams a 4-year $54.5 million contract. I mean, it doesn’t sound that bad right now, but this was almost 10 years ago. Like the salary cap was much different. 2019, you’re giving Scary Terry a threeyear 57 million deal. And then this one honestly might be the worst in some ways. Gordon Hayward 4-year $120 million contract in 2020. That was a Gordon Hayward after the horrific injury. Clearly past his a couple years after, not like immediately after. So you could like trick yourselves and be like, “Oh no, when he comes back from the injury, he’ll be fine.” No, he had been back and it was obvious like, “Yeah, he’s not the same guy anymore.” So overall, when it comes to roster construction, it’s hard as a small market. You got to be an OKC, a San Antonio, really draft well, really trade well. And the Hornets have done none of that. And also, we got to mention here, they’ve just had some bad luck over the years. I mean, some years, you have to wonder why they weren’t tanking harder. Like, they were always consistently pushing for like the 10th seed in the East, it felt like. And Hornets fans have said that was because Jordan like always wanted to push for wins like no matter how good the roster was. Good job, you dumbass. you’ve cursed your team to infinite mediocrity. But honestly, it’s kind of crazy that the Hornets/BOCs have never had the first overall pick since returning to the NBA in ’04 considering how bad they’ve been. I mean, they had it in their first run. They took Larry Johnson. But since the Bobcats era and like the new Hornets era, never gotten it. And they’ve missed out on some gems in that time. Yeah. 2008 you had D. Rose. 2009 you had Blake Griffin. 2011 Kyrie. 2012 Anthony Davis. Recently Anthony Edwards, Webby. There’s other guys like John Wall. Like obviously there’s so many legendary players that go first because it’s the first pick in the draft. You get your choice at all the players coming in. And it’s just like sad to see they haven’t gotten the first overall pick. They’re not the only team that’s been super unlucky. You got Sacramento who’s also been pretty bad during this stretch. They haven’t gotten the first overall pick. But still, that’s tough because as we all know, one player in the NBA can completely change your franchise. And we’ve touched on it a couple times, like it’s just hard to build in a small market. Like you got to have a super well-run franchise, but you know, free agents aren’t going to be over the moon to go play in Charlotte. Even if like Michael Jordan is your owner and you idolized him growing up, like it’s going to take overpaying. Case in point, Nick Batum, $24 million a year because Charlotte’s just not a premier destination in the NBA. It’s like Portland. Like, we love it. It’s home, but as much as we would like to think otherwise, a lot of millionaire athletes don’t want to come live here. And Charlotte’s the same way. A lot of blame though goes around that front office. Like Jordan, phenomenal player, one of the greatest of all time, maybe the greatest of all time, terrible as an owner. Good god. Yeah, we went over the drafting. It’s got to be the worst drafting stretch in NBA history. And the saddest part about all this, looking at the Hornets roster, looking at their future, doesn’t look like it’s changing anytime soon. So that’s the video, guys. What do you think is the main reason the Charlotte Hornets are always bad? And is it ever going to change? Or Charlotte Hornets fans just stuck in a constant state of depression? Let us know in the comments below. If you enjoyed the video, please consider giving a like. And hey, while you’re here, check out some of our other content as well. And don’t forget to subscribe to Synthetic Sports.

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The Charlotte Hornets just missed the playoffs for the 9th year in a row and so far in the offseason they haven’t done much to end the streak for next year. In they over 20 seasons since basketball has returned to Charlotte the Bobcats / Hornets have only three playoff appearances and have yet to win a playoff series. Today we try to find out why the Charlotte Hornets are always bad.

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