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:
I’d like to start here with a quote from someone whom I’ve watched a lot over the years of my life, thus far:
“Everyone… stay calm – EVERYONE STAY F****NG CALM!”
While the Charlotte Hornets fans are all in different varieties of panic mode right now, similar to the above-quoted Michael Scott during a fire drill – I think we all need to collectively take a breath of either: 1. Fresh air, or 2. A Xanax (if prescribed!)
A glass of water may even help, with so many of you on Twitter losing your voices with concern. Talking-head Dry-Throat Syndrome Lives matter, too.
I, and others before me, have called this Hornets season a ‘house money’ year. I’d like to really illustrate that real quick, so you all have an idea of where my head is at.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve only actually gambled on a few occasions. I don’t particularly love the firm grasp that gambling companies have in our world right now, so I consciously try to stay away.
But let’s imagine a world where I’m not protesting The Man in my own way (don’t worry, that’ll never actually happen).
Imagine not only a world where I gamble, but one where I’m a degenerate who’s lost all my money to the casino(s). I’m walking out towards the front doors, wallet empty, tears in my eyes… no hope. I’m down for the count, right? That’s the Charlotte Hornets of yesteryear. Gambled until broke, everything lost in a bout with the (metaphorical) NBA casino.
Left with 19 wins, and a wonder of if your star player(s) could even be on the court long enough to ever be a star player again.
Now, let’s take that degenerate gambler who’s bet their life into irrelevancy again. Our multiple-year sub-20 win Hornets, if you haven’t caught the drift by now.
You’ve finally finished the walk of shame to the front door with your pockets empty, your dreams, or soul, crushed, likely both, and you just don’t know where to turn.
Until, and this is how you know this is an allegory for certain, a casino worker walks up to you. He looks familiar, and he tells you his name is Bradam Tilver. He offers you a million more dollars to go gamble for free. Gamble once, Tilver says, and after? You can take the rest home if you’d like. On the house!
Well, it wasn’t Adam Silver or Bradam Tilver, but that’s exactly what our beaten and bruised multiple-season struggle bugs were gifted this offseason.
House money. At points this season, the complete overhaul has truly felt like a gift from the basketball gods. If you’ve watched years of dreadful Hornets basketball, that’s what this has felt like – so absurd and unbelievable that I can only compare it to a casino worker dupe of Adam Silver offering you free money that you can have on the house with no strings attached.
These Hornets have 42 wins after beating the Pacers on Friday night, guaranteeing a winning season for the first time since 2021-2022. Before that, 2015-2016, 2013-2014, and 2009-2010.
The latter three seasons listed are the only times the Charlotte Hornets and Bobcats (since expansion in 2004-2005) have ever made the playoffs outright. 2021-2022 was a blowout in the first-ever NBA Play-In Tournament, not an outright appearance. Those 2021-2022 Hornets are still the highest-finishing tenth seed since the invention of the Play-In Tournament.
None of those years left you with the swell of future hope that this Hornets team has right now, internally and externally, regardless of their end-of-season outcome. Only a first-game bounce, particularly a blowout, in a play-in game could change the temperature gauge from where it is now.
Strings of bad games are going to happen, guys. Especially against good teams. These guys in purple and teal haven’t seen high-leverage basketball like this in almost 4 years. Some of them have never been in it at all.
It takes punches from elite NBA teams to learn how to eventually deliver blows of your own.
It was never going to happen this year. This is all for fun, a free one million dollars to gamble or take home, if you will, and to see where next year can take us. We all eventually get past the euphoria of a surprise team.
Even after the disillusionment sets in, everyone try and enjoy it while you can… This magical season is rapidly approaching its conclusion. Let’s not forget the joy that these 82 have given us along the way.
I don’t care how it ends, as long as it’s respectable (Please. I can’t watch another blowout in the play-in.)
I just can’t wait to get there and see how it ends, instead of talking about it ad nauseam… again.
The other three segments of Owen Watterson’s weekly column will be posted at 5:00 PM EST, Saturday, April 4th, and can be found here.