The Saturday Stinger
Your Weekly Charlotte Hornets Notebook that’s not afraid to laugh at itself. Not here to convince you with stats, just good prose; I can’t afford Synergy.
The Sermon on The Spectrum (Center)
My big picture, Weekly State of the Hive Address:
Not since the summer of 2022 has an offseason been this important for your — OUR — Charlotte Hornets.
And boy, did they botch that one badly.
I remember diving into former Hornet draftee and UConn guard James Bouknight’s film and being a bit excited. He could move off the ball well in college, shot much better in school than he inevitably would in the league, and c’mon.
It’s the Charlotte Hornets. Kemba was only a few years removed from leaving the team in a sign-and-trade to Boston…
It was a UConn guard. Safe to say that I was jaded from the jump.
Coming off their last winning season prior to our current ‘25-‘26 Bugs, everyone already knew LaMelo Ball had star potential.
He needed a running mate, and Miles Bridges was only in his second year. PJ Washington was still growing as a player. The Terry Rozier fit in the backcourt didn’t really work. Charlotte still didn’t have a real center.
Gordon Hayward had shown the front office he couldn’t be that main No. 2 guy, and Charlotte had just gotten obliterated in the Play-In by Indiana.
I haven’t seen many postseason games, much less a single postseason game, that crippled an NBA team’s offseason morale like that one did for Charlotte.
While I can’t quantify it as the reason for the collapse or make a case that it’s 100% true, in hindsight, it’s most certainly what it feels like happened nowadays.
Charlotte took Bouknight and traded up to get Kai Jones in the NBA draft the following June after their loss to the Pacers. They traded up for the first time in what felt like a millennium in the NBA draft to get Jones.
To put it kindly, it just didn’t work out. For either of them.
Hornets fans have always had a habit of overhyping prospects in past years as a way to cope with the on-court performance. Hyping up a prospect or young rostered rookie at least gives you hope.
The team wasn’t giving much of that hope out on their own. You can’t blame the fans for that.
This part here is what’s funny to me, looking back on that 2022 draft:
Remembering how quickly a fanbase that was known for overhyping their players bailed on those two guys’ potential. Some Jones believers stuck around a while based on his athleticism alone.
It wasn’t for very long.
The Hornets can’t afford to make the same mistake after this year’s winning season that they did the first time around. Not the trade-up for Jones itself, but Charlotte can’t afford to swing and miss on someone in late June this year. Period.
They need to be a contributor. Preferably immediately, as hard as that can be to expect of a rookie. I’d rather Charlotte trade their pick for a bona fide role player than swing and miss on someone.
Many a team has had a “wow, this group has real potential,” year — i.e., our current Hornets.
Charlotte had another one in 2021-2022. What most teams have always messed up is what comes next; Mitch Kupchak’s worst offseason, after his best team performance on-court in his tenure, put the Hornets right into that “most teams’ boat.
We all have a lot of Jeff Peterson love right now.
If Peterson botches this offseason as badly as Mitch Kupchak did in 2022, it could do real irreparable damage.
It took 4 years, a bullseye draft pick in Kon Knueppel, and multiple trades that the Hornets can look back on and say they won to dig out of that hole.
Let’s hope Peterson’s good rapport and patience in finding the right deal, which we’ve come to expect so far, remain true this summer.
None of us wants to go back into that dreaded darkness again. I’ve said this in an earlier edition, but it’s such a great metaphor.
Jeff Peterson is Woody in Toy Story 2: His arrival got me out of the packing peanuts, box, and darkness. I finally saw sunlight. You, me? The fans of the Hornets? We’re Jessie and Bullseye.
I don’t care if you go back home to your kid and your friends, Jeff. I understand.
I just can’t go back into storage again. Just like Jessie and Bullseye were due to finally get out, and stay out of those boxes, these fans are all due to stay out of the dark for longer than one year again. I’m nervous, but am resting my laurels on the greatness Jeff Peterson has clearly shown us he’s capable of in the long term.
Here’s to hoping and believing it’ll sustain.
The last three segments of Owen Watterson’s weekly column will be available here at 5 PM EST today.