Yes, we know that this is taking a while!

As many of you know, we at Notinhalloffame.com are slowly generating the top 50 of each major North American sports team. That being said, we have existing Top 50 lists and consistently look to update them when necessary and based on necessity. As such, we are delighted to present our post-2023-24 revision of our top 50 Charlotte Hornets.

As for all of our top 50 players in basketball, we look at the following:

1.  Advanced Statistics.

2.  Traditional statistics and how they finished in the National Basketball Association.

3.  Playoff accomplishments.

4.  Their overall impact on the team and other intangibles that are not reflected in a stat sheet.

Last year, Charlotte had another awful year and was nowhere close to playoff consideration.  As this is a very young organization, there were multiple elevations and one new entrant. 

As always, we present our top five, which saw no changes:

1. Kenba Walker
2. Gerald Wallace
3. Larry Johnson
4. Muggsy Bogues
5. Dell Curry

You can find the entire list here.

Terry Rozier, who was traded to the Miami Heat during the season, played 30 Games for Charlotte.  There was a chasm between his #17 rank and #16, and he did not do enough to advance from that rank.

LaMelo Ball, who played less than 30 Games last year, still managed to climb up five spots to #18.  This is a testament to Ball’s skills and the lack of overall talent this Hornets incarnation has had.

The returning Miles Bridges moved up four spots to #21.

P.J. Washington, who was traded to the Dallas Mavericks during the season, went up one spot to #40.

Gordon Hayward, who retired after the season (and was also traded during the year to the Oklahoma City Thunder) advanced one rank to #45.

The new entrant is Center Nick Richards, who debuts at #48.

We thank you for your continued support of our lists on Notinhalloffame.com.

During the NBA free agency season, a significant player retired from the game of basketball. Kemba Walker, 34, announced his retirement.

Walker was a dominant force at UConn, leading the Huskies to a national championship in 2011, where he was named the Final Four Most Outstanding Player, the Big East Tournament MVP, and a consensus first team All-American.  For his efforts, he was drafted by the Charlotte Bobcats (later Hornets) ninth overall in 2011, the team he remains most associated with.

Walker broke out in the 2015-16 campaign, where he was second in Most Improved Player of the Year voting and had his first of five straight 20-PPG seasons. He went to his first All-Star Game a year later and was named to that mid-season classic the next two years.  This culminated in an All-NBA Third Team Selection in 2018-19, which was his best year in Basketball.

He joined the Boston Celtics as part of a sign-and-trade in 2019 and promptly had his fourth (and final) All-Star year, but knee problems began to rear its ugly head.  Walker was traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder, where his contract was bought out.  He finished his NBA run with a year in New York and nine Games in Dallas.

He concluded his career with one season with Monaco in the French League, where his squad won the league championship.

Walker is eligible for the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2028, though that might be a tough ask.  Hopefully, the Hornets will acknowledge him in some capacity in the future.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com wish Kemba Walker the best in his post-playing career.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com are always looking to add new sections to our website.  Last month, we uploaded our top 100 active NFL players and how their Hall of Fame resumes stack up.  

We are doing the exact same thing with the NBA.

As opposed to 100 like we did in Football, we are going with only 50 in Basketball.  

We liked the idea that we used in Football with a modern “Modern Positional Average”, so we are doing something similar here.  With advanced analytics, we decided that we don’t have to isolate based on position so they are all on one list.

Inspired by Jay Jaffe’s JAWS statistic that looks at the best seven-year stretch of a baseball player according to bWAR, we are doing the same with current basketball players.  Specifically, we compiled the average PER, Win Shares and VORP for each of the past Hall of Famers based on their best seven-year period.  The additional thinking behind this is that in Basketball, there is an additional focus on periods of greatness as opposed to sports like Baseball, where compiling statistics is more glorified.

To keep everything modern, the average we used is the last 14 inductees, but only the ones who were Modern Era Inductees.  This excludes Direct-Elect Candidates (contributors, Early African-American Pioneers, International and Veterans).  The only exception is Vlade Divac, who was chosen via the International Committee, but has a healthy NBA career to draw upon.

As of this writing, the 14 players from the last four induction classes who we are using for the composite averages are:

Ray Allen, Maurice Cheeks, Vlade Divac, Bobby Jones, Grant Hill, Allen Iverson, Jason Kidd, Tracy McGrady, Yao Ming, Sidney Moncrief, Steve Nash, Shaquille O’Neal, Jack Sikma and Paul Westphal. 

While we are not looking at traditional statistics, we are averaging out All-Star Games and All-NBA Selections.  With the latter, we are looking at this in weighted fashion.  In terms of Third Team All-NBA Selections, one point will be assigned, Second Team All-NBA Selections will have two points will be granted, and First Team All-NBA Selections will have three points.  

Here are the averages:

Based on their elite seven-year stretch the average PER of the last 14 Modern Era Hall of Famers is 21.5.

Based on their elite seven-year stretch, the average Win Shares of the last 14 Modern Era Hall of Famers is 65.1.

Based on their elite seven-year stretch, the average VORP of the last 14 Modern Era Hall of Famers is 27.8.

With All-Star and All-NBA Selections, we look at the entire career of the player.  

The average All-Star Selections of the last 14 Modern Era Hall of Famers is 7.4.

The average All-Pro Selections (based on the pointed average of one for a Third Team, two for a Second Team and three for a First Team Selection) is 9.8.

We are also adding NBA Championships. Often,  players in this team sport more than any other (except for NFL Quarterbacks) are judged by the number of rings they have.  Perhaps, that shouldn't be as regarded as it is, considering the average amount of titles of our last 14 Modern Era Hall of Famers is less than 1.  Specifically, it is 0.79.

Wrapping this up in a bow, the six variables we are looking at Elite Period PER, Elite Period Win Shares, Elite Period VORP, All-Star Games, Weighted All-Pro Selections, NBA Championships.

This will be a regular feature on Notinhalloffame.com, and we will be updating this at the end of the season.

You can find our new section HERE.

As always, we here at Notinhalloffame.com thank all of you for your support!

While it is taking is quite some time for us to generate our top 50 players for each major franchise (MLB, NBA, NFL & NHL), we also endeavor to update all of our existing lists when we can.

As such we have done so with a revision of the Charlotte Hornets.

As for all of our top 50 players in basketball we look at the following:

1. 1. Advanced Statistics, such as PER, Win Shares, and VORP.

2. 2. Traditional statistics and how they finished in the NBA.

3. 3. Playoff accomplishments.

4. 4. Their overall impact on the team and other intangibles not reflected in a stat sheet.

Remember, this is ONLY based on what a player does on that particular team and not what he accomplished elsewhere and also note that we have placed an increased importance on the first two categories.

Also remember that in the case of the Charlotte Hornets, the history of the original incarnation of the Hornets is part of this, as they own the rights to that legacy. This also includes the expansion Charlotte Bobcats, who would reclaim the name of the Hornets.

This list is updated up until the end of the 2017-18 Season.

The complete list can be found here, but as always we announce our top five in this article. They are:

1. 1. Kemba Walker: Over the last two seasons, Walker moved from #6 to #1 and is the definite face of the franchise, though this has been a team that has not advanced to the Quarter-Finals.

2. 2. Gerald Wallace: Due to a slight adjustment in the way we do our rankings, Wallace moved ahead of Larry Johnson and held his #2 spot.

3. 3. Larry Johnson: Johnson slides one spot due to the changes we made on our algorithms but remains as one of the greatest Charlotte Hornets of all-time.

4. 4. Muggsy Bogues: Bogues may be small in stature but he is still a top five player in terms of all-time Charlotte Hornet history.

5. 5. Dell Curry: In terms of who Dell Curry is, many figure him is as the father of Steph but for this purpose he is ranked #5 on our all-time lust for the Charlotte Hornets.

There are other significant changes worth mentioning as there are four significant jumps and three new debuts on this list:

Marvin Williams moves from #25 to #14.

Cody Zeller moves from #27 to #17.

Michael Kidd-Gilchrist moves from #38 to #22.

Nicolas Batum moves form #47 to #23.

The new entries are:

Jeremy Lamb at #31.

Dwight Howard at #35.

Frank Kaminsky at #45.

We will continue our adjustments on our existing lists and will continue developing our new lists.

As always we thank you for your support.

Our process continues!

Regular visitors know that we are slowly working away on our Top 50 players for each major franchise.  Those same visitors know that they are being added VERY slowly and that we have a long way to go still.

Having said that, we have updated the first NBA Top 50 list, which is that of the Charlotte Hornets. 

In the future, changes to top 50 NBA teams will be more subtle, as we now have an algorithm that is fixed, and adds more elements of advanced statistics.  All changes after this will be only reflect what has changed over a completed season.  Basically, what we are saying is that the Hornets overhaul reflects our new system and now the 2015-16 season accomplishments.

We have switched around the entire list, but for the sake of brevity, let’s look at the new top five:

Larry Johnson takes over the #1 from Gerald Wallace who traded places to come in at #2.  Muggsy Bogues and Dell Curry remain at #3 and #4 respectively.  Glen Rice moves into #5, up one spot, taking over for Emeka Okafor who dropped significantly to #9.  Notably, Kemba Walker moved up from #12 to #6.

The entire list can be found here.

Look for more Top 50 lists and revisions from us soon!

The Final Four MVP and NCAA Champion with the University of Connecticut, Kemba Walker has not had the same team success with the Charlotte Hornets but this does not mean that he has not put up very good numbers in the pros.  He certainly did, as he moved up to our number one spot for this franchise.  

The Point Guard is a very good scorer whose overall game has been improving year by year and is one of the more underrated players in the NBA.  While Walker's Hornets teams only made the playoffs twice over his eight years with the team, the fact that they even made two was mostly because of him.  He would be named to the All-Star in his last three seasons in the Queen City and he was a Third Team All-NBA Selection in what was his final season before signing with the Boston Celtics.