| CHARLOTTE HORNETS HISTORY
Quick facts:
Founded: 1988
Re-founded: 2005
Arena: Time Warner Cable Arena
Owner: Michael J. Jordan
Division titles none
NBA Titles: None
Playoffs: 10
Name and History confusion:
A lot of fans have confusion about the name and history of the Hornets and now the Pelicans. The team that is now the Pelicans began as the Charlotte Hornets in 1988 and remained so until 2002 when they moved to New Orleans. in 2014 the New Orleans Hornets became the New Orleans Pelicans and the name transferred to this current franchise.
When the New Orleans franchise became the Pelicans the histories of the two franchises were re-written. The Bobcats got the name Hornets along with the history of the Hornets from 1988-2002. The Pelicans kept their New Orleans and Oklahoma City history from 2002 onward, but are now considered an expansion team.
What's in the name?:
Though, it may not seem like it, the Hornets have one of the more interesting historical names in the NBA. During the American Revolution a detachment of British soldiers tried to attack the rebel Americans hiding in the swampy area in North Carolina, what the British found instead was a hail of gun fire that was so bad as one British officer said it was like stepping into a Hornets nest.
Because of this account, the name Hornets won out during a competition to name the team in 1988. The name Hornets also sounded better than the original name: Charlotte Spirit.
Big Big House:
Charlotte was an unlikely home for the NBA in the 1980s. The city was a college basketball hot bed, but most outsiders thought the area to rural to support an NBA franchise. The city did have one thing going for it - The Charlotte Coliseum.
The Charlotte Coliseum was the largest basketball specific arena in the world seating just over 24,000 fans. The city would end up with the 24th NBA franchise and set many attendance records because of the large venue.
In one of the great ironies of sports, the Coliseum was also the reason why the city of Charlotte lost the Hornets in 2002. By the early 2000s the Coliseum had become dated and needed an update and the city of Charlotte refused to build a new modern arena. This caused Hornets owner George Shinn to move the team to New Orleans.
Pin Stripes:
Pin stripes have been popular with the MLB for years, the Chicago Cubs were the first professional sports team to don pin strips In 1907 and the New York Yankees are famous for their pin striped uniforms. But the craze never took on in the NBA until the Hornets introduced their first uniforms with pin strips in 1988.
The Hornets new uniforms kicked off a pin strip craze that kind of defined the NBA uniforms of the 1990s. In addition to the Hornets other teams who used pin strips where the Chicago Bulls, Orlando Magic and Houston Rockets.
2017 All-Star Game Bathroom Bill Controversy:
Charlotte, which hosted the 1990 NBA All-Star game, was supposed to host the 2017 game. But the North Carolina passed a controversial bathroom bills geared towards trans-gender people. In response to the bill many NBA sponsored threatened to pull out and many NBA players who highly critical of the decision to allow Charlotte to host.
The NBA move the game to New Orleans, Louisiana marking the first time that a US sporting event had been moved for political reasons since the 1990 Super Bowl.
The NBA has, however, awarded the 2019 NBA All-star game to Charlotte.
Muggy Bogues: Shortest Player in NBA History
It is not often that the shortest guy on a basketball court is the biggest on the court. But that is exactly what Tyrone "Muggsy" Bogues was in his stellar NBA career.
The NBA has always been a game centered around tall human beings. Even in today's game where the game is played on the perimeter, the best players are tall. For example Kevin Durant is almost 7-feet tall and Lebron James is 6'9". It is rare for anyone under six feet tall to play in the NBA. Even the WNBA is littered with giants. The Average WNBA player is just under 6-feet tall, and the shortest WNBA player in the 2021 season was Leilani Mitchell at 5 foot 5 inches
Muggsy Bogues on the other hand was short, even by WNBA standards. He was just 5 foot 3 inches, making him the shortest NBA player ever and 2 inches shorter than the shortest WNBA player currently in the WNBA. Debbie Black and Shannon Babbitt are the two shortest WNBA player's in WNBA history at 5'2", or 1 inch shorter than Bogues.
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The Greatest Teams To Never Win An NBA Title
An often-debated topic among NBA circles is "Who is the greatest franchise in NBA history?". There are lots of very good teams to chose from. Could it be the team with the most NBA titles in 17, the Boston Celtics? Could it be the team with the most consistency in winning titles; the Los Angeles Lakers? Maybe it could be the most consistent team in terms of overall winning the San Antonio Spurs? The Warriors, Bulls, and 76ers also get honorable mentions. All these teams have one thing in common - multiple NBA titles.
One thing not often discussed is who is the greatest NBA franchise who has never won a title? The list is actually quite short, as only eleven NBA teams have yet to win an NBA title. Five of those teams to never win a title are recent having just joined the NBA in the past 35 years. Six of the eleven teams have yet to even make an NBA-finals.
Three of the four teams from the ABA have never won an NBA title, though the Indiana Pacers and Brooklyn Nets have both gotten close
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Who is the worst franchise in NBA history?
Losing is as much a part of basketball as winning, but some teams do the former a lot more often than the latter. They lose so much that they become synonymous with losing. The Clippers have been the butt of many jokes, especially during the 1990s, about their winning futility, but they seem to have turned it around once being sold off.
So who is the worst team in NBA history? Obviously, the Los Angeles Clippers come to mind first and foremost. This is a franchise that all but embraced losing and made it part of their identity. But a forced ownership change has seemingly given the Clippers a new identity that has taken them away from the trash heap of the NBA. The glitz and the glam of LA also added to the Clippers mystic as the unlovable losers, and the franchise did deserve a lot of the bashing it got for sucking.
The Clippers were run by a terrible owner in Donald Sterling and had a terrible general manager in Elgin Baylor, that Sterling insisted on keep even though the team was always terrible
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The Teams: Bobcats
They are the newest of the 30 NBA teams, formed in 2003. They are the Charlotte Bobcats.
The Bobcats history is thin at best, but in each of their first three seasons the team has gotten considerably better than the previous season. Their first season they won just 18 games, the next season that number jumped to 26, and just last season they finished with 33 wins.
The Bobcats were born out of the controversy of the Charlotte Hornets relocating after the 2002 season. Charlotte which had always had good attendance for its NBA games lost the Hornets because the city wouldn�t build a new arena for Hornets owner George Shinn.
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Kelly Tripuka being introduced as one of the first Charlotte Hornets.
Larry Johnson would be one of the franchises first marketable stars. He would help guide the Hornets to multiple playoff appearances and his iconic Grandma-ma commercials are still considered some of the best and most memorable shoe commercials in history.
Dell Curry was a two-time sixth man of the year award winner for the Hornets in the 1990s. Dell's son Steph would go on to be an NBA two time MVP.
Muggy Bogues at 5 foot 4 is one of the shortest players to ever play in the NBA.
Alonzo Mourning along with Larry Johnson and Muggsy Bogues helped make the Hornets a force in the early 1990s.
In a what could have been, the Hornets drafted future Hall-of-Famer Kobe Bryant with the 13th pick in the 1996 draft. Bryant refused to play for the Hornets and was soon traded to the Los Angeles Lakers.
Glen Rice winning All-star game MVP in 1997.
Kimba Walker would help revitalize the new Hornets and set the franchise record for most points in a game - 51 vs Utah.
North Carolina native and the greatest NBA player ever, Michael Jordan purchases the Hornets becoming one of the first former players to ever own a team. However, he is not the first as five members of the Indianapolis Olympians owned the team back in the 1950s.
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