As of Jan. 1, the Charlotte Hornets were 11-22, tied with the Brooklyn Nets for 12th in the Eastern Conference. Charlotte, which entered the season with the lowest title odds in the league and the NBA’s longest playoff drought at nine seasons, was expected at that point to finish the season with just 28 wins. A new year had delivered a familiar story. With a highly touted draft class on the horizon, the time to tank seemed to be nearing.
Instead, the Hornets went the other way. The team won 28 of its final 38 games to earn a home play-in game against Miami on Tuesday, the city’s first postseason action since Dwyane Wade’s Heat dispatched Charlotte in 2016’s first round.
Hornets fans will be there. Charlotte’s attendance grew 9% from last season, the largest jump in the league. Spectrum Center set a building record with 25 sellouts, including 15 straight to end the year. Amid the late-season surge, Hornets ownership boosted morale further by introducing $2 concession items. The team is still an extreme longshot for an NBA title (current implied probability at sportsbooks: 0.6%), but while many other fanbases debate the ethics of tanking this season, the benefits of being competitive are newly apparent in the Carolinas.
Charlotte once boasted one of the strongest fan bases in the league, topping the NBA’s attendance rankings for most of the 1990s after coming into existence in 1988. But that team moved to New Orleans, and the replacement Bobcats failed to make the same impact.
Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall led a group that took over the Hornets in 2023 in a $3 billion deal. The team drafted toward the top of the lottery in the next two years, while behind the scenes, leaders focused on investing in infrastructure to change the franchise’s trajectory. Jeff Peterson, who previously signed Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving in Brooklyn, was hired in 2024 to lead basketball operations. Ex-Celtics assistant Charles Lee joined as head coach shortly thereafter, and he tapped franchise legend Kemba Walker as a staffer. Nearly $400 million was poured into a new performance center and arena upgrades.
“We think this is going to be the best practice facility in the league,” Hornets co-owner Schnall said at the 2025 groundbreaking ceremony. “It’s going to have facilities that free agents will want to come and play with us, our players will want to stay and be here, and we’ll be able to develop our players into stars over time.” The Hornets have hired more than 60 people under new ownership, according to The Athletic.
This year’s team has been largely built through the draft, including 2020 No. 3 pick LaMelo Ball, 2023 No. 2 selection Brandon Miller and last year’s seventh pick, Kon Knueppel, who has a good chance of claiming rookie of the year honors. Past losses are contributing to current wins.
It’s the type of core that might inspire other teams to bottom out themselves. “Being in the middle is probably not where you want to be,” Bulls guard Josh Giddey recently said. “You either want to be the top end of the lottery, or you want to be competing for championships.”
The Hornets finished the year squarely in the middle, 16th in a 30 team league. But advanced stats suggest they could keep rising in future seasons. And after a decade without postseason play in town, few fans have been brave enough to suggest the team should have intentionally stunk again instead.
At this year’s trade deadline, Charlotte was a buyer for the first time in years, adding Chicago guard Coby White as the Bulls embraced a rebuild. More importantly, the Hornets didn’t trade their own stars.
“I got calls on every piece of the core, quite frankly,” Peterson said to reporters after the trade deadline passed, “but this group, they earned the right to see it through.”
The team’s turnaround still pales in comparison to what Oklahoma City or San Antonio has done, emerging as title contenders with MVP-caliber players anchoring their lineups. In a few years’ time, today’s tankers may be similarly grateful for the pain they’ve endured.
But right now, the Hornets are celebrating success.
On the court, a playoff push changes a team, according to Lee. “As a coach, you’re trying to get them to focus on the process sometimes, and not always the results, but I love this for them,” he said before the team’s regular season finale. “It just helps cultivate a little bit of what your growth project should be during the summer. Sometimes when you’ve never experienced it, you’ve never seen it, you don’t really know how to prepare for it.”
The value can be seen off the court too. Just glance around Spectrum Center’s stuffed stands on Tuesday night.