Top 50 Charlotte Hornets
Entering the National Basketball Association as an expansion team in 1988, the Charlotte Hornets have had an interesting history, though not necessarily a successful one. Many speculated that the city could not support professional basketball, despite North Carolina being a haven for the college game.The pundits were proven wrong as though they played like an expansion team, the attendance was huge and they led the NBA in that category during their inaugural season. Charlotte suffered through the aches and pains of being an expansion team, but finally, they made the playoffs and has a few good players which gave them national attention, though when they slipped back, the attendance wasn’t there and they fell to the bottom in that category and management moved the team to New Orleans following the end of the 2001/02 season.
While that might seem like it would doom professional basketball in Charlotte, the state had already shown it could support hockey (the Carolina Hurricanes) and football (the Carolina Panthers). The NBA wanted to give it another try, and in 2004, the Charlotte Bobcats were born, though again feeling the pains of expansion. Despite the challenges, Charlotte has emerged as a city with one of the best basketball programs in the NBA.
Meanwhile, back in New Orleans, the team sought to come up with a team that reflected their own region. For the 2013-14 season, they were renamed the Pelicans, and the city of Charlotte looked to get back their old name, which after one year they had. This is where it becomes very interesting for our purposes.
The new Charlotte Hornets absorbed the history of the old Charlotte Hornets, which splits the career of many “Hornets” whose best years are divided between New Orleans and Charlotte for our Top 50s.
This list is up to the end of the 2023/24 season.
Note: Basketball lists are based on an amalgamation of tenure, traditional statistics, advanced statistics, playoff statistics and post-season accolades.
Mason Plumlee can be a punchline in some circles, but that should not be the case, as his play at Center has always been solid, though not star-making. You don’t have to be a star to make it in the NBA, and Plumlee was already an eight-year veteran before he was traded to Charlotte, his fifth NBA team. A Hornet for 129 Games, Plumlee started them all, averaging 9 Points and 8.6 Rebounds per Game.…
Arriving in Charlotte as a two-time All-Star, Kelly Tripucka finished his career as a Hornet and did so with some impressive offensive numbers as he would average 22.6 Points per Game in his first season in Charlotte. He would decline quickly, but he provided the scoring threat in the inaugural season that Hornets fans craved.
Devonte’ Graham arrived in Charlotte as part of a draft day trade with Atlanta in 2018, and the Kansas Jayhawk had been with the Hornets ever since.
While Matt Carroll was not one of the most productive players in NBA history (realistically, expansion got him a job with Charlotte), Carroll does have one of the longer tenures (serving two stints) with the franchise. He was known for his work ethic as a player, making the most for what he had and you knew he was never going to make a mistake due to apathy.
Gordon Hayward was an All-Star in Utah, and was signed by the Boston Celtics in 2017, though he got off to a rocky start when he was injured six minutes into the season and missed the year. Heyward never matched his production in Boston, but Charlotte hoped for better when they acquired the Forward in a sign-and-trade in 2020. Hayward averaged 19.4 Points per Game with a 17.5 PER in his first year in Buzz…
Ok…let us begin with the obvious. Dwight Howard will be a first ballot Hall of Famer and he should be.
A two time NCAA Champion at the University of Kentucky, Nazr Mohammed would not have the same kind of team success playing in Charlotte. Still, the native of Chicago was an above-average defensive presence who was a great presence under the glass. He would have his highest PER in a season (19.6) with Charlotte in the 2009/10 campaign.
Originally from Kingston, Jamaica, Nick Richards’ talent brought him to the United States, where he became a star at the University of Kentucky. After a solid college run, he was drafted by the New Orleans Pelicans in the 2020 Second Round and traded the day after to Charlotte. The Center bounced between the Hornets and the G-League and played off the bench the years after before he found significant time in 2023-24. That season, he…
In his sophomore season, Scott Burrell would become the starting Point Guard for the Charlotte Hornets and in the process would finish third in balloting for the Most Improved Player in the NBA. Like so many, injuries would take him out of the starting lineup but the Point Guard’s 1994/95 season was decent enough to place him on a list like this, on a team with the limited history of the Charlotte Hornets.
While the Slovenian seven footer may not have been a huge star in the National Basketball Association, Primoz Brezec did have a couple of decent campaigns with Charlotte where he averaged over 10 Points per Game. A selection in the expansion draft, Brezec enjoyed the most minutes of his career, but beyond his first two seasons as a Bobcat, Brezec didn’t accomplish much else in North American basketball.