Official Game Thread: Hawks at Hornets (7 PM EST) -- The Season Opener!

[lethalweapon3]

“What kind of cockamamie first name is Kelly, Tripucka? No way your parents approve that! And don’t you have any decency? Pull your shorts down!”

 

What even IS this place?

A half-season removed from his epic duel with Larry Bird, Dominique Wilkins had to be thoroughly flummoxed. He and fellow All-Star starter Moses Malone were soon heading down to Houston, joining forces with Michael Jordan and friends for a midseason extravaganza before a record capacity crowd at the hallowed Astrodome.

But first, a pit stop for them and the 28-18 Atlanta Hawks, a team fighting once more for first-round homecourt in the treacherous Eastern Conference, against their hosts, a team that was clearly the East’s worst.

As was custom, coach Mike Fratello’s Hawks toyed around with their lesser opponents. But even absent two starting forwards, Moses and Nique had their Hawks up five through three quarters. Surely, this team across the floor, nonexistent a mere eight months prior, would simply fold like origami in the fourth and prepare to enjoy their siesta.

Suddenly, the Hawks’ foes quit fumbling away the ball, stopped bailing out Atlanta with petty fouls, sank open jumpers, and attacked on the break. The graying Malone found himself out-boarded by the similarly aged Earl Cureton and Robert Reid, the pair making a maypole out of the Hawks’ well-heeled fill-in starter, Jon Koncak. A rookie named Rex, and a supposed franchise face named Tripucka, were giving Atlanta defenders fits.

Doc Rivers and Reggie Theus were hounded by Kurt Rambis, while miniature marvel Spud Webb discovered he was out-nickeled and out-dimed by an even shorter kid named Muggsy. Atlanta’s tenuous lead shrunk, and with each home team bucket, a crowd of nearly 25,000, the envy of anything ever seen at the Omni on non-rasslin’ nights, whipped itself into a frenzy for their lovable, last-place losers.

Reid’s tie-breaking 15-foot jumper with ten seconds to spare hit nylon, Malone’s desperation heave at the buzzer fell short, and pandemonium among the spectators, clad in an odd shades of blue, green, and purple once reserved for Jazzercise, ensued.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Hornets are now 13-35! Go crazy, Charlotte, North Carolina, go crazy!

It used to be, as Nique and MJ grew up knowing, that if you were a Carolinian with an interest in witnessing live professional hoops, you’d jaunt to Atlanta, or the D.C. area, and maybe make a little vacation out of it. But Charlotteans, in the inaugural Hornets season of 1988-89, were treating drives down West Tyvola Road to the new, expansive Charlotte Coliseum like it was a trip to Tulum.

“It’s not how you feel,” Billy Crystal would quip on SNL as novelty ladies-man Fernando back then, “it’s How. You. LOOK!” Owner George Shinn, the Billy Payne of the Carolinas, and his Hornets cleverly presented themselves, at once, as aw-shucks hokey AND avant-garde, rendering themselves accessible to onlookers of all ages as well as fashion-forward. Nobody in the NBA suits up in pinstripes. And teal, you say? What kind of joint is this?

One that was absolutely Mah-velous, Shinn would respond. He “paid” his pal, Chapel Hill-bred fashionista Alexander Julian, five pounds of “Carolina caviar” (i.e., pulled pork) monthly, to come up with the uniform and warmup designs. The rest is Starter Jacket history. “Well, George got rich,” Julian recalled, “and I got fat. I traded $10 million worth of royalties for a gut.”

Mecklenburg County’s middle-schoolers could no longer pull fast ones on substitute teachers at roll call time. The name d*ck Harter was already renowned as the Hornets’ first head coach, the defensive-minded tactician out-strategizing Fratello on that February evening. And everyone knew the name of Kelly Tripucka, who had literally taken the town by storm. Whenever a Hornet scored 40 points, as Tripucka did thrice, they’d be invited the next day on the local news to do the weather forecast.

Nique shouldn’t have felt too bad about letting a game slip to this expansion club before the All-Star break. His Airness and the Bulls got stung here in similar fashion, on national TV, right before Christmas ’88. Just 3-21 on the road by that All-Star Break, the Hornets’ contests were more of a toss-up at the Coliseum, to the delight of the spirited fan hive embracing their first, and sole, major-league team.

As fun as the present was, there seemed to be so much more to look forward to in the future. Sure, you had to settle for the hand-me-downs of the league in the expansion draft, guys like Dell Curry and Muggsy and such. But with the emerging three-point line in place there was boundless potential to grow the team around more prototypically athletic shooting guards, like Chapman. Also, imagine if Jordan gets homesick and one day demands out of chilly Chicago! It’s not like the league MVP is winning anything more in the Windy City.

The prevailing thoughts, in 1989: these Hornets might be a sorry bunch on the floor right now, and that’s okay. So long as they grow, and always fare better, and certainly look better, than their twin NBA expansion franchise birthed in April 1987, the rival newbies hopelessly stuck over in the Western Conference, way down in Florida.

Flash forward.

Today is the opener of the 2023-24 NBA season for both the Atlanta Hawks and the Charlotte Hornets (let’s go on and get the particulars out the way, 7 PM, Bally Sports Southeast, 92.9 FM in ATL), and the latter has made it through 35 years of un(fortunately)-interrupted NBA hoops in the Queen City.

Charlotte has grown near exponentially as a global banking capital. Most significantly the Uptown business district where Shinn tried, in vain, to have the city construct him a replacement arena replete with amenities for his luxury-class associates.

Shinn, unlike Payne, never earned himself a statue, not after years of personal peccadilloes and blown trust caused Charlotte, who sold out the Coliseum in most of its first nine seasons, to momentarily lose their beloved franchise. Jordan did indeed make it to Charlotte, albeit not in the capacity once pipe-dreamed. At least MJ never did suit up for Miami. Not like that town ever needed Him.

We all get the same 24 hours. But let longtime Hornets fans tell it: we don’t all get the same 35 years.

Since tipoff in the inaugural 1988-89 season, the team christened as the Miami heat, who checked out that year at a league-worst 15-67 to Charlotte’s 20-62, has become an NBA flagship in the minds of fans, sports media, and players, free agents or otherwise, alike. The heat boast of not one, not two, but three NBA Championships, out of seven trips to The Finals, an average of once every five years in their existence. That includes last season’s sprint from the Play-Ins (despite Atlanta’s Trae Young doing all he could to thwart them) after a lackluster 44-38 regular season, one of two trips to The Finals over the past four years.

After shifting rightfully to the Eastern Conference in the 1990s, Miami has tallied ten trips to the Conference Finals, the NBA’s Final Four, since Pat Riley escaped from New York in 1995, sticking around as the team executive after hanging up his coaching suit in in 2008.

So many of the greatest Hall of Fame names in the history of the sport – Riley, Timmy, Zo, Wade, Shaq, LeBron, Ray, Bosh – are intricately associated with Miami heat basketball. There are at least a couple more players and a video-coordinator-turned-head-coach angling for a spot in Springfield one day, too. Superstars from every corner of the NBA Comic Universe hold their incumbent teams hostage with threats and demands to be traded to the state income tax haven with sun, sand, surf, and so, so many IG baddies, in South Florida.

Did I mention Zo? Alonzo Mourning spurned Charlotte’s seven-year contract package at the start of 1995-96’s season. Fearing losing the two-time All-Star for nothing, the Hornets traded him to Miami. With Mourning as a centerpiece, Riley promptly built up a perennial conference contender. Mourning recovered from a kidney disorder in 2003, signed to play briefly in New Jersey, returned in time to win a ring with the heat in 2005, and never left Miami again. One of the handful (a palmful?) of successful lottery picks of the Hornets has been the heat’s VP of player development since 2009.

Charlotte, in stark contrast, has failed to reach the second round of the conference playoffs since 2002, coincidentally the summer that the Hornets were summarily packed up and relocated to New Orleans. As a consolation prize, the intervening Charlotte Bobcats era reached rock bottom with an all-time nadir of 7-59 in 2012.

MJ did arrive to save Charlotte basketball, but only as an ownership partner. He relinquished his controlling interest in the franchise to former Hawks minority owner Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin this past July, after oozing out as much of the league’s revenue-growth honey as he could stand, while absorbing the discredit of his GMs’ innumerable blunders.

We’ll never know, for just one example, the extent to which Jordan’s influence compelled ex-Laker GM Mitch Kupchak to make Shai Gilgeous-Alexander his first draft selection with the Hornets, only to trade him for the boundless energy of the next pick, Miles “Minnesota Fats” Bridges. But, yeah, proof, pudding, and whatnot.

MIami dipped into the lottery, nabbed Flash Wade in '03 after Bron and Bosh came off the board, and have cruised on the heat Culture tip ever since. The perpetually tanking Horcats/Bobnets (27-55 last season, next-to-last in the NBA East, but 3-1 vs. ATL) have lived in the lottery for so much of the past two decades, all in hopes that The Next Michael that lands in their laps isn’t another Kidd-Gilchrist. Good luck to their latest contestant, 2023 second-overall pick Brandon Miller, who will probably want to ensure he isn’t getting caught out here in these streets riding dirty. Uber, young man, Uber.

Not all of the lotto gambles they roll turn out poorly enough to make Adam Morrison cry. There was a moment there where the antics of LaMelo Ball’s father threatened to be the biggest ongoing distraction around town.  Having inked a $260 million extension this past summer, Ball (career-best 23.3 PPG, but on career-low 41.1 FG% and 33 appearances last season) is now in the unenvious, Sisyphean position where former leading man Kemba Walker once toiled. Carry this franchise as far uphill as you can, and do your best not to get Lonzo’d into the ground in the process.

It didn’t even take thirty years for this Hornets franchise to devolve from one with seemingly boundless potential to one, given the ownership to the front office to the coaching box to the roster in perpetual flux, with potential that seems, well, bounded.

Acquired from the Celtics in the 2019 deal for Kemba, Terry Rozier remains thrilled to be here. Or, at least, he has accepted his lot in life, that his game (career-bests of 21.1 PPG and 5.1 APG, but on 41.5% shooting from the field, lowest since 2018-19) and his bloated guaranteed multi-year contract ($23-25 million guaranteed thru 2025-26) carries stability nowhere else in this league but here.

It’s a similar situation for Boston’s 2020 sign-and-trade hand-me-down, the oft-injured Gordon Hayward, although if the 33-year-old (an All-Star in 2017 with coach Quin Snyder’s Jazz) remains upright and functional, his expiring $31.5 million contract may draw suitors by midseason. Kupchak, and head coach Steve Clifford? Where else are they gonna go, in 2023, and get paid like this?

The NBA’s most visibly vibrant franchise has been, arguably, its most stale, interesting only on occasion for only the wrong reasons. And yet, there remains an interminable romanticization with the Hornets’ fading semi-glorious past.

It’s a lingering, saccharine sentiment, local, regional, and international, that bleeds, in teal, through to the current day, in ways their opponents tonight have rarely been granted since landing in Georgia from Missouri 55 years ago. The missteps in Atlanta, Washington, Charlotte, and Orlando are many, and Miami’s pales in comparison. Yet it’s not the Hornets, or the Magic, but the sole original NBA franchise within the Southeast Division, scrapping with the Wizlets for the rights to the least NBA folklore.

Anytime the good folks at Atlanta-based NBATV ran out of programming options this past summer, they ginned up “Where The Buzz Began,” a 2019 documentary retelling the surprising birth and immediate faregate success of the Hornets in Charlotte. Pairing it, like wine with cheese, is “Muggsy: Always Believe” (2021), a tear-jerking account of Bogues’ come-up from hardscrabble Baltimore to eventually steal the hearts of Charlotteans and aspiring he-too-littles everywhere.

Not to remind Hawks fans that “The Doctor” doc should have been about the 70’s supernova’s grand tenure in Atlanta, but NBATV will play Muggsy’s flick just as often when there’s dead space in the schedule. Where, pray tell, is Spud Webb’s two-hour movie block? You’ll catch a glance of Larry Johnson’s muumuu more frequently than, say, a re-airing of Spud and Nique’s riveting Slam Dunk contests.

The Hawks had some snazzy threads back then, too. Where’s that story? Gimme that year Kyle Korver’s Hawks emerged from organizational morass, got it up out the mud behind Coach Bud, and surged to an improbable top spot in the East and a date with LeBron’s destiny in the ECF. “Atlanta Hawks: When the Feathers Flew”? I’ll keep checking my local listings.

Between now and MLK Day, when Atlanta gets a visit from the San Antonio Spurs, the Hawks (41-41, tied-8^th in NBA East in 2022-23), somehow a playoff participant in each of the past three years, have zero national TV games to showcase whatever Coach Quin has cobbled together with this lightly remodeled roster, one with Charlotte native Saddiq Bey (39-42% on corner 3FGAs in his three NBA seasons; 6.9 rebounds per-36 in 25 games w/ ATL last season) likely starting in place of the skedaddled former mainstay John Collins (career-lows of 15.7 points, 7.8 boards, and 1.4 assists per-36 in 2022-23). That’s one less national broadcast than the Hornets, whose preceding January matchup with the Spurs gets the ESPN Friday Night Showcase treatment.

The Hawks can only help make their case for a bigger spotlight by doing what they haven’t done in recent seasons, in soundly and consistently handling their business versus Play-In wannabes like the Spurs, and the lowly teams within their own division.

As dull as Atlanta’s offseason was, Miami (3.0 games ahead of ATL last season) lost more role players, and the biggest fish they sought all summer now swims in Milwaukee. Emerge as the clear class of the NBA Southeast, and the worthy attention will come for the Hawks. Fail at that, and North America would rather just peep at whatever LaMelo, or Paolo, or Poole, has got going on in prime time.

Young and Dejounte Murray (minus-0.8 points per-100 possessions as a 2-Man lineup in 2022-23, as per bball-ref) have another full season to prove their budding chemistry pays dividends at both ends of the court. In an era of, “But can you shoot, tho?” for NBA pivots, Clint Capela’s sustained worthiness as a rim protector and screen setter must pass the bar. Collins’ limitations as a ball-handler, a post passer and a corner shooter set the floor below which Atlanta’s cadre of forwards and bigs, including Bey, De’Andre Hunter, A.J. Griffin, Jalen Johnson and the recently contract-extended Onyeka Okongwu, must not reside.

The only Hawks alive back When The Buzz Began, Wesley Matthews and Patty Mills must be the rare veterans worthy of rotation minutes, in Mills’ case, at least until rookie Kobe Bufkin can get up to speed. Having Bogdan Bogdanovic available for as many as 22 more games at the regular season’s outset ought to be a boon for a team that was thoroughly three-point shy whenever Trae couldn’t shoot it from the popcorn stands.

Atlanta fans can thank their lucky stars last June’s lottery card turned to reveal the Hornets pick at #2, otherwise Teal Town would be locked in for many more features. Given Charlotte’s sketchy basketball track record, Wemby can be gracious to the constellations, too. Otherwise, Victor might have soon caught himself looking around Spectrum Center, scratching his head and wondering, “Alors, c’est quoi cet endroit?”

 

Peace on Earth. Thank You, D’Backs. Let’s Go Hawks!

~lw3

[JeffS17]

10 minutes ago, lethalweapon3 said:

“What kind of cockamamie first name is Kelly, Tripucka? No way your parents approve that! And don’t you have any decency? Pull your shorts down!”

 

What even IS this place?

A half-season removed from his epic duel with Larry Bird, Dominique Wilkins had to be thoroughly flummoxed. He and fellow All-Star starter Moses Malone were soon heading down to Houston, joining forces with Michael Jordan and friends for a midseason extravaganza before a record capacity crowd at the hallowed Astrodome.

But first, a pit stop for them and the 28-18 Atlanta Hawks, a team fighting once more for first-round homecourt in the treacherous Eastern Conference, against their hosts, a team that was clearly the East’s worst.

As was custom, coach Mike Fratello’s Hawks toyed around with their lesser opponents. But even absent two starting forwards, Moses and Nique had their Hawks up five through three quarters. Surely, this team across the floor, nonexistent a mere eight months prior, would simply fold like origami in the fourth and prepare to enjoy their siesta.

Suddenly, the Hawks’ foes quit fumbling away the ball, stopped bailing out Atlanta with petty fouls, sank open jumpers, and attacked on the break. The graying Malone found himself out-boarded by the similarly aged Earl Cureton and Robert Reid, the pair making a maypole out of the Hawks’ well-heeled fill-in starter, Jon Koncak. A rookie named Rex, and a supposed franchise face named Tripucka, were giving Atlanta defenders fits.

Doc Rivers and Reggie Theus were hounded by Kurt Rambis, while miniature marvel Spud Webb discovered he was out-nickeled and out-dimed by an even shorter kid named Muggsy. Atlanta’s tenuous lead shrunk, and with each home team bucket, a crowd of nearly 25,000, the envy of anything ever seen at the Omni on non-rasslin’ nights, whipped itself into a frenzy for their lovable, last-place losers.

Reid’s tie-breaking 15-foot jumper with ten seconds to spare hit nylon, Malone’s desperation heave at the buzzer fell short, and pandemonium among the spectators, clad in an odd shades of blue, green, and purple once reserved for Jazzercise, ensued.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Hornets are now 13-35! Go crazy, Charlotte, North Carolina, go crazy!

It used to be, as Nique and MJ grew up knowing, that if you were a Carolinian with an interest in witnessing live professional hoops, you’d jaunt to Atlanta, or the D.C. area, and maybe make a little vacation out of it. But Charlotteans, in the inaugural Hornets season of 1988-89, were treating drives down West Tyvola Road to the new, expansive Charlotte Coliseum like it was a trip to Tulum.

“It’s not how you feel,” Billy Crystal would quip on SNL as novelty ladies-man Fernando back then, “it’s How. You. LOOK!” Owner George Shinn, the Billy Payne of the Carolinas, and his Hornets cleverly presented themselves, at once, as aw-shucks hokey AND avant-garde, rendering themselves accessible to onlookers of all ages as well as fashion-forward. Nobody in the NBA suits up in pinstripes. And teal, you say? What kind of joint is this?

One that was absolutely Mah-velous, Shinn would respond. He “paid” his pal, Chapel Hill-bred fashionista Alexander Julian, five pounds of “Carolina caviar” (i.e., pulled pork) monthly, to come up with the uniform and warmup designs. The rest is Starter Jacket history. “Well, George got rich,” Julian recalled, “and I got fat. I traded $10 million worth of royalties for a gut.”

Mecklenburg County’s middle-schoolers could no longer pull fast ones on substitute teachers at roll call time. The name d*ck Harter was already renowned as the Hornets’ first head coach, the defensive-minded tactician out-strategizing Fratello on that February evening. And everyone knew the name of Kelly Tripucka, who had literally taken the town by storm. Whenever a Hornet scored 40 points, as Tripucka did thrice, they’d be invited the next day on the local news to do the weather forecast.

Nique shouldn’t have felt too bad about letting a game slip to this expansion club before the All-Star break. His Airness and the Bulls got stung here in similar fashion, on national TV, right before Christmas ’88. Just 3-21 on the road by that All-Star Break, the Hornets’ contests were more of a toss-up at the Coliseum, to the delight of the spirited fan hive embracing their first, and sole, major-league team.

As fun as the present was, there seemed to be so much more to look forward to in the future. Sure, you had to settle for the hand-me-downs of the league in the expansion draft, guys like Dell Curry and Muggsy and such. But with the emerging three-point line in place there was boundless potential to grow the team around more prototypically athletic shooting guards, like Chapman. Also, imagine if Jordan gets homesick and one day demands out of chilly Chicago! It’s not like the league MVP is winning anything more in the Windy City.

The prevailing thoughts, in 1989: these Hornets might be a sorry bunch on the floor right now, and that’s okay. So long as they grow, and always fare better, and certainly look better, than their twin NBA expansion franchise birthed in April 1987, the rival newbies hopelessly stuck over in the Western Conference, way down in Florida.

Flash forward.

Today is the opener of the 2023-24 NBA season for both the Atlanta Hawks and the Charlotte Hornets (let’s go on and get the particulars out the way, 7 PM, Bally Sports Southeast, 92.9 FM in ATL), and the latter has made it through 35 years of un(fortunately)-interrupted NBA hoops in the Queen City.

Charlotte has grown near exponentially as a global banking capital. Most significantly the Uptown business district where Shinn tried, in vain, to have the city construct him a replacement arena replete with amenities for his luxury-class associates.

Shinn, unlike Payne, never earned himself a statue, not after years of personal peccadilloes and blown trust caused Charlotte, who sold out the Coliseum in most of its first nine seasons, to momentarily lose their beloved franchise. Jordan did indeed make it to Charlotte, albeit not in the capacity once pipe-dreamed. At least MJ never did suit up for Miami. Not like that town ever needed Him.

We all get the same 24 hours. But let longtime Hornets fans tell it: we don’t all get the same 35 years.

Since tipoff in the inaugural 1988-89 season, the team christened as the Miami heat, who checked out that year at a league-worst 15-67 to Charlotte’s 20-62, has become an NBA flagship in the minds of fans, sports media, and players, free agents or otherwise, alike. The heat boast of not one, not two, but three NBA Championships, out of seven trips to The Finals, an average of once every five years in their existence. That includes last season’s sprint from the Play-Ins (despite Atlanta’s Trae Young doing all he could to thwart them) after a lackluster 44-38 regular season, one of two trips to The Finals over the past four years.

After shifting rightfully to the Eastern Conference in the 1990s, Miami has tallied ten trips to the Conference Finals, the NBA’s Final Four, since Pat Riley escaped from New York in 1995, sticking around as the team executive after hanging up his coaching suit in in 2008.

So many of the greatest Hall of Fame names in the history of the sport – Riley, Timmy, Zo, Wade, Shaq, LeBron, Ray, Bosh – are intricately associated with Miami heat basketball. There are at least a couple more players and a video-coordinator-turned-head-coach angling for a spot in Springfield one day, too. Superstars from every corner of the NBA Comic Universe hold their incumbent teams hostage with threats and demands to be traded to the state income tax haven with sun, sand, surf, and so, so many IG baddies, in South Florida.

Did I mention Zo? Alonzo Mourning spurned Charlotte’s seven-year contract package at the start of 1995-96’s season. Fearing losing the two-time All-Star for nothing, the Hornets traded him to Miami. With Mourning as a centerpiece, Riley promptly built up a perennial conference contender. Mourning recovered from a kidney disorder in 2003, signed to play briefly in New Jersey, returned in time to win a ring with the heat in 2005, and never left Miami again. One of the handful (a palmful?) of successful lottery picks of the Hornets has been the heat’s VP of player development since 2009.

Charlotte, in stark contrast, has failed to reach the second round of the conference playoffs since 2002, coincidentally the summer that the Hornets were summarily packed up and relocated to New Orleans. As a consolation prize, the intervening Charlotte Bobcats era reached rock bottom with an all-time nadir of 7-59 in 2012.

MJ did arrive to save Charlotte basketball, but only as an ownership partner. He relinquished his controlling interest in the franchise to former Hawks minority owner Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin this past July, after oozing out as much of the league’s revenue-growth honey as he could stand, while absorbing the discredit of his GMs’ innumerable blunders.

We’ll never know, for just one example, the extent to which Jordan’s influence compelled ex-Laker GM Mitch Kupchak to make Shai Gilgeous-Alexander his first draft selection with the Hornets, only to trade him for the boundless energy of the next pick, Miles “Minnesota Fats” Bridges. But, yeah, proof, pudding, and whatnot.

MIami dipped into the lottery, nabbed Flash Wade in '03 after Bron and Bosh came off the board, and have cruised on the heat Culture tip ever since. The perpetually tanking Horcats/Bobnets (27-55 last season, next-to-last in the NBA East, but 3-1 vs. ATL) have lived in the lottery for so much of the past two decades, all in hopes that The Next Michael that lands in their laps isn’t another Kidd-Gilchrist. Good luck to their latest contestant, 2023 second-overall pick Brandon Miller, who will probably want to ensure he isn’t getting caught out here in these streets riding dirty. Uber, young man, Uber.

Not all of the lotto gambles they roll turn out poorly enough to make Adam Morrison cry. There was a moment there where the antics of LaMelo Ball’s father threatened to be the biggest ongoing distraction around town.  Having inked a $260 million extension this past summer, Ball (career-best 23.3 PPG, but on career-low 41.1 FG% and 33 appearances last season) is now in the unenvious, Sisyphean position where former leading man Kemba Walker once toiled. Carry this franchise as far uphill as you can, and do your best not to get Lonzo’d into the ground in the process.

It didn’t even take thirty years for this Hornets franchise to devolve from one with seemingly boundless potential to one, given the ownership to the front office to the coaching box to the roster in perpetual flux, with potential that seems, well, bounded.

Acquired from the Celtics in the 2019 deal for Kemba, Terry Rozier remains thrilled to be here. Or, at least, he has accepted his lot in life, that his game (career-bests of 21.1 PPG and 5.1 APG, but on 41.5% shooting from the field, lowest since 2018-19) and his bloated guaranteed multi-year contract ($23-25 million guaranteed thru 2025-26) carries stability nowhere else in this league but here.

It’s a similar situation for Boston’s 2020 sign-and-trade hand-me-down, the oft-injured Gordon Hayward, although if the 33-year-old (an All-Star in 2017 with coach Quin Snyder’s Jazz) remains upright and functional, his expiring $31.5 million contract may draw suitors by midseason. Kupchak, and head coach Steve Clifford? Where else are they gonna go, in 2023, and get paid like this?

The NBA’s most visibly vibrant franchise has been, arguably, its most stale, interesting only on occasion for only the wrong reasons. And yet, there remains an interminable romanticization with the Hornets’ fading semi-glorious past.

It’s a lingering, saccharine sentiment, local, regional, and international, that bleeds, in teal, through to the current day, in ways their opponents tonight have rarely been granted since landing in Georgia from Missouri 55 years ago. The missteps in Atlanta, Washington, Charlotte, and Orlando are many, and Miami’s pales in comparison. Yet it’s not the Hornets, or the Magic, but the sole original NBA franchise within the Southeast Division, scrapping with the Wizlets for the rights to the least NBA folklore.

Anytime the good folks at Atlanta-based NBATV ran out of programming options this past summer, they ginned up “Where The Buzz Began,” a 2019 documentary retelling the surprising birth and immediate faregate success of the Hornets in Charlotte. Pairing it, like wine with cheese, is “Muggsy: Always Believe” (2021), a tear-jerking account of Bogues’ come-up from hardscrabble Baltimore to eventually steal the hearts of Charlotteans and aspiring he-too-littles everywhere.

Not to remind Hawks fans that “The Doctor” doc should have been about the 70’s supernova’s grand tenure in Atlanta, but NBATV will play Muggsy’s flick just as often when there’s dead space in the schedule. Where, pray tell, is Spud Webb’s two-hour movie block? You’ll catch a glance of Larry Johnson’s muumuu more frequently than, say, a re-airing of Spud and Nique’s riveting Slam Dunk contests.

The Hawks had some snazzy threads back then, too. Where’s that story? Gimme that year Kyle Korver’s Hawks emerged from organizational morass, got it up out the mud behind Coach Bud, and surged to an improbable top spot in the East and a date with LeBron’s destiny in the ECF. “Atlanta Hawks: When the Feathers Flew”? I’ll keep checking my local listings.

Between now and MLK Day, when Atlanta gets a visit from the San Antonio Spurs, the Hawks (41-41, tied-8^th in NBA East in 2022-23), somehow a playoff participant in each of the past three years, have zero national TV games to showcase whatever Coach Quin has cobbled together with this lightly remodeled roster, one with Charlotte native Saddiq Bey (39-42% on corner 3FGAs in his three NBA seasons; 6.9 rebounds per-36 in 25 games w/ ATL last season) likely starting in place of the skedaddled former mainstay John Collins (career-lows of 15.7 points, 7.8 boards, and 1.4 assists per-36 in 2022-23). That’s one less national broadcast than the Hornets, whose preceding January matchup with the Spurs gets the ESPN Friday Night Showcase treatment.

The Hawks can only help make their case for a bigger spotlight by doing what they haven’t done in recent seasons, in soundly and consistently handling their business versus Play-In wannabes like the Spurs, and the lowly teams within their own division.

As dull as Atlanta’s offseason was, Miami (3.0 games ahead of ATL last season) lost more role players, and the biggest fish they sought all summer now swims in Milwaukee. Emerge as the clear class of the NBA Southeast, and the worthy attention will come for the Hawks. Fail at that, and North America would rather just peep at whatever LaMelo, or Paolo, or Poole, has got going on in prime time.

Young and Dejounte Murray (minus-0.8 points per-100 possessions as a 2-Man lineup in 2022-23, as per bball-ref) have another full season to prove their budding chemistry pays dividends at both ends of the court. In an era of, “But can you shoot, tho?” for NBA pivots, Clint Capela’s sustained worthiness as a rim protector and screen setter must pass the bar. Collins’ limitations as a ball-handler, a post passer and a corner shooter set the floor below which Atlanta’s cadre of forwards and bigs, including the recently contract-extended Bey, De’Andre Hunter, A.J. Griffin, Jalen Johnson and Onyeka Okongwu, must not reside.

The only Hawks alive back When The Buzz Began, Wesley Matthews and Patty Mills must be the rare veterans worthy of rotation minutes, in Mills’ case, at least until rookie Kobe Bufkin can get up to speed. Having Bogdan Bogdanovic available for as many as 22 more games at the regular season’s outset ought to be a boon for a team that was thoroughly three-point shy whenever Trae couldn’t shoot it from the popcorn stands.

Atlanta fans can thank their lucky stars last June’s lottery card turned to reveal the Hornets pick at #2, otherwise Teal Town would be locked in for many more features. Given Charlotte’s sketchy basketball track record, Wemby can be gracious to the constellations, too. Otherwise, Victor might have soon caught himself looking around Spectrum Center, scratching his head and wondering, “Alors, c’est quoi cet endroit?”

 

Peace on Earth. Thank You, D’Backs. Let’s Go Hawks!

~lw3

Good read, miss these.  Feels like it's been a year since our last regular season game!

[lethalweapon3]

In a tale of two decades, the Hornets celebrated their home finale last year by noting their sellout at 17,500-seat Spectrum Center was the most they've had since getting their team back in 2003... a grand sellout total of 16.

EDIT: a couple gamethread OP-related links on the pre-Buzzkill era of 80s Hornets hoops...

https://www.charlottemagazine.com/the-place-went-nuts-an-oral-history-of-the-1988-charlotte-hornets/

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-02-10-sp-2505-story.html

The dust settled on the Frank Ntilikina-Theo Maledon-Edmond Sumner race to back up LaMelo, and the winner is... Ish Smith, scooped up yesterday after the team cut Sumner loose. The Wake Forest product and 2023 NBA champ will not add to his record 13 different NBA employers, as he was with the Hornets for a half-season back in 2022.

Injury sheet as of this morning for the Bugs:

The Hawks' pregame injury sheet is pretty good, with exception to this feller.

~lw3

[swanlee]

Heres to hopefully a fun season at worst

[JayBirdHawk]

38 minutes ago, JeffS17 said:

including the recently contract-extended Bey,

. What did I miss? 

[JayBirdHawk]

It's game day Squawkers!!!

 

[lethalweapon3]

6 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

. What did I miss? 

Where's that cut-and-paste feature... ah, there it is! Back in a minute!

~lw3

[NBASupes]

Hawks Killer, Miles Bridges is still suspended 

[Gray Mule]

Back!  We've really missed all these great write-ups!  Thank you so much!

Will this year's Hornet's team put their fatal sting on our birds?  We hope not!

GO ATL HAWKS!!

[Spud2nique]

1 hour ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Jon Koncak.

 

 

1 hour ago, lethalweapon3 said:

miniature marvel Spud Webb discovered he was out-nickeled and out-dimed by an even shorter kid named Muggsy.

Oh the glory days.  

 

1 hour ago, lethalweapon3 said:

The prevailing thoughts, in 1989: these Hornets might be a sorry bunch on the floor right now, and that’s okay. So long as they grow, and always fare better, and certainly look better, than their twin NBA expansion franchise birthed in April 1987, the rival newbies hopelessly stuck over in the Western Conference, way down in Florida.

They constructed an awesome team.

 

1 hour ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Did I mention Zo? Alonzo Mourning spurned Charlotte’s seven-year contract package at the start of 1995-96’s season.

That was Jim Carey fault for making bank for the Mask. I remember Zo wanted Carey  

1 hour ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Miles “Minnesota Fats” Bridges.

I thought that was muscle  

 

1 hour ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Where, pray tell, is Spud Webb’s two-hour movie block?

Preeeeeeaaachhhh!

 

1 hour ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Peace on Earth. Thank You, D’Backs. Let’s Go Hawks!

Yes sir! Great to have you back. Loved and missed the threads!

GO HAWKS!!!!!!

[kg01]

2 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

?”Peace on Earth. Thank You, D’Backs. Let’s Go Hawks!

~lw3

Ohhhhh, this is some postseason-level snark.  I'm here for it.  Lethal don't gotta get ready, he stay ready. 

[Diesel]

I don't expect this to be a walk in the park.   Melo is healthy and Brandon Miller may try to put on a show.   He's was about 15/8 for his preseason before they shut him down.   We need Hunter to be aggressive on both ends.   Miller is young and commits dumb fouls.  Melo is a big guard and he gives both Trae and DJ trouble.   PJ Washington hasn't had a problem scoring on us in the past.  Terry Rozier is just a bulldog.   They can run and gun with us.  It will be interesting to see how we play them. 

 

 

[kg01]

7 minutes ago, Diesel said:

I don't expect this to be a walk in the park.   Melo is healthy and Brandon Miller may try to put on a show.   He's was about 15/8 for his preseason before they shut him down.   We need Hunter to be aggressive on both ends.   Miller is young and commits dumb fouls.  Melo is a big guard and he gives both Trae and DJ trouble.   PJ Washington hasn't had a problem scoring on us in the past.  Terry Rozier is just a bulldog.   They can run and gun with us.  It will be interesting to see how we play them. 

 

 

It'll be about control.  Who controls the pace and who values possessions.  When we fall into helter shelter play vs them, via bad shots and not valuing possessions, they feast on us.  Plain and simple.

When we make them play cerebral basketball, they break down.

Great game-1 test to see where we are in the process of killing our bad habits.  I'm looking for that win or lose. 

[Diesel]

4 minutes ago, kg01 said:

It'll be about control.  Who controls the pace and who values possessions.  When we fall into helter shelter play vs them, via bad shots and not valuing possessions, they feast on us.  Plain and simple.

When we make them play cerebral basketball, they break down.

Great game-1 test to see where we are in the process of killing our bad habits.  I'm looking for that win or lose. 

I recall us beating them in the playin game a few years ago.   It was just as you said, a lack of helter skelter.  We have to stay disciplined to what Quin has been teaching and looking for the best shots in all situations.   I think the big difference is Brandon Miller.   He's no Cody Martin.   This guy has big time star with cocky attitude written all over him.   He's been talking ish to MJ.    That's a cocky kid. But I believe he's got a skillset that was severely overlooked with all the talk of Wimby and Scoot.    But much like the rest of the team save Rozier, he's prone to do dumb stuff.  That's why this has to be an aggressive game for Hunter.   Hunter has to make this kid play defense.   If Hunter decides to just lay back, this kid is going to feast.   Hunter, Bey, and JJ will have to make this kid work on defense because he's severely foul prone. 

 

 

[kg01]

25 minutes ago, Diesel said:

I recall us beating them in the playin game a few years ago.   It was just as you said, a lack of helter skelter.  We have to stay disciplined to what Quin has been teaching and looking for the best shots in all situations.   I think the big difference is Brandon Miller.   He's no Cody Martin.   This guy has big time star with cocky attitude written all over him.   He's been talking ish to MJ.    That's a cocky kid. But I believe he's got a skillset that was severely overlooked with all the talk of Wimby and Scoot.    But much like the rest of the team save Rozier, he's prone to do dumb stuff.  That's why this has to be an aggressive game for Hunter.   Hunter has to make this kid play defense.   If Hunter decides to just lay back, this kid is going to feast.   Hunter, Bey, and JJ will have to make this kid work on defense because he's severely foul prone. 

 

 

I'm not so high on Miller being an x factor.  But honestly, even if he does get off, I look for Ball and Rozier to negate it with low bbiq play/shots.

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[Spud2nique]

2 hours ago, kg01 said:

I'm not so high on Miller

No surprise you aren’t usually high on anyone until they pull an on you. {mid season snarky mode}..
 

[Spud2nique]

2k24 is bs @Sothron I lowered the level to all star ️ and they still can’t hit outside shots. 
 

Plus, I know Gordon Hayward is usually injured and MIA but they literally wouldn’t show him in the game, anytime he had the ball I would just see a floating ball bouncing around being controlled by the freakin air or something whacky from the twilight zone or something.

Trae shot like $hit but fishes still there and CC boarded and OO had a well rounded game. DJ was ok.

ps This is a jinx reverse jinx because I fully expect us to beat these dudes tonight.

Vegas spread is -3.5 Hawks

Hawks by 11 is what I have tonight.

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[Spud2nique]

Black unis tonight!  Gonna make a STATEMENT..  

Edited October 25, 2023 by Spud2nique