Hornets haven’t made the playoffs since 2016. Here’s my prediction for this season
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Hornets Season Preview
From storylines to X-factors to profiles on some of the team’s biggest stars, this is The Observer’s Hornets season preview ahead of their first regular season game on Oct. 19.
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Hornets haven’t made the playoffs since 2016. Here’s my prediction for this season
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Here’s the bad news: The Charlotte Hornets haven’t won a playoff series in 20 years, haven’t made the playoffs at all over the past six seasons, and are in a state of limbo as to whether their second-best player will play at all this season.
Here’s the good news: LaMelo Ball is a bona fide star, Charlotte has several other promising young players and the Hornets have rehired the last coach that got them to the playoffs.
This is a Hornets team that will start the season on a seesaw and likely ride it all year. In other words, it could go either way. The Hornets could be a 45-win team or a 25-win team. On the plus side, there’s some potential there, and watching Ball lead the fast break is enough to make most fans think they got their money’s worth.
The other half of Ball’s best alley-oops, however, were often dunked by Miles Bridges. And whether Bridges plays at all this season is tied up in court in California, where he is accused of domestic violence. Bridges, Charlotte’s leading scorer in 2021-22 at 20.2 points per game, was arrested on June 29 in Los Angeles and charged with beating up his girlfriend in front of their two children. He pleaded not guilty on July 20 to three felony charges: injuring a child’s parent and two counts of child abuse under circumstances or conditions likely to cause great bodily injury or death.
For now, the Hornets must play like Bridges won’t be available to them all season, because it’s very possible he won’t.
Steve Clifford has gone full circle with the Hornets, from being hired to fired to hired again, to replace the very man who had replaced him (James Borrego). Clifford is the last coach to get the Hornets to the playoffs — they made it twice in his five-year tenure from 2013-18. He’s defensive-minded and a grinder, likable and intense.
“We’re not giving up transition baskets,” Clifford said firmly when we talked recently. Several times.
And while this may not always be true, it will be true that every transition basket by the opposing team will be scrutinized by Charlotte’s coaching staff. Put it this way: I wouldn’t want to be the guy who sulked because he didn’t make an open three-pointer and then allowed a dunk on the other end because he didn’t get back on D.
Clifford knows this team will flow through Ball, and he’s been enthralled by Ball’s upbeat nature.
“To be honest, if you spend any time with him, it’s very hard not to enjoy it,” the coach said.
The Hornets’ X Factors
Still, Ball can improve, too, both in one-on-one defensive coverage and in getting to the foul line more often — a particular point of emphasis this season. And it’s not great that he will begin the season with a left ankle sprain sustained Monday, one that may keep him out for the first few games of the season.
There are other X factors. Gordon Hayward, the talented but injury-prone forward, has missed at least 20 games each of the past three seasons. Forward P.J. Washington needs to take a big step this year, as does guard James Bouknight. Terry Rozier and Kelly Oubre Jr. are two of Charlotte’s best five players and also have to help ensure the team fights the reputation that it’s not that tough or physical.
Before Bridges’ legal issues put his status into doubt — and make no mistake, those legal issues are very serious — Hornets general manager Mitch Kupchak set a high standard for a Hornets team that went 43-39 last season but lost in the postseason play-in tournament, badly, for the second year in a row to miss the actual playoffs.
“We can be a better team and win more games,” Kupchak said in June. “Is that 45 games, or 47 or 49? I don’t know. Certainly I feel we should be in contention to make the playoffs…. I’d like to think that our goal here is not to get in the playoffs and get the eighth spot and win a round. I mean, that would be wonderful. But that’s certainly not our owner (Michael Jordan)’s goal and that’s not my goal. My goal is to get this franchise into position where we can not only make the playoffs and advance in the playoffs, but at some point the Eastern Conference Finals should be realistic, right?”
My Hornets prediction
The Eastern Conference Finals ain’t happening this year. Las Vegas has set the over-under on Hornets’ victories at 36.5 in an 82-game season, which wouldn’t come close to making the playoffs.
Last year I picked the Hornets to go 43-39, and for once hit a numerical prediction on the nose. (I also thought that would be enough to make the playoffs, so feel free to take points off for that).
This year is more difficult than usual to pick, because of the Bridges uncertainty and the fact that Hayward has already missed some time (again!) when he sustained a slight knee injury in the preseason.
But I’ll pick it anyway, and in this case I’m going slightly lower than Vegas and well off Kupchak’s rosy trio of possibilities.
I think the Hornets will go 35-47. It will be better than that only if Clifford and his coaching staff can turn some average players into good ones, and a couple of the good ones into great ones.
All of that seems like a lot. As we’ve seen with the Carolina Panthers this year, when a team isn’t talented enough to blow anyone out, it’s prone to losing a lot of close games and seeing things go south — and people get fired — in a hurry.
Still, the Hornets have Melo once he returns from his ankle injury, and that’ll make it fun.
They have Clifford, and that will make the defense better. They have a chance. And at the beginning of any sports season, that’s enough to make life interesting.
This story was originally published October 13, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
