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How the Hornets are bringing the NBA back to life in Charlotte
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- How the Hornets are bringing the NBA back to life in Charlotte
They started calling Hector Cortes, "Sombrero Man," because it was Latino Night at a Charlotte Bobcats game more than a decade ago. The Spectrum Center jumbotron showed this local middle school teacher wearing his oversized charro hat "dancing like a maniac," he recalled, and soon enough the sombrero became part of Cortes's identity as a Charlotte resident , as much as his Mexican roots and upbringing rooting for the Lakers in the Los Angeles area.
The gimmick was part of the distraction on most nights. From the heartbreak of losing the original version of the Charlotte Hornets to New Orleans in 2002 and the heartache of watching another expansion team that has yet to win a playoff series in the 21 years since the NBA brought pro basketball back to Charlotte . The current version of the Hornets, which changed its name from Bobcats before the 2014-15 season, hasn't even made the playoffs in a decade.
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So Cortes can't quite explain exactly what's happening to his favorite NBA team, only that he figured out the vibe was unmistakably different by March 26. The New York Knicks were in town and however loud "Sombrero Man" gets, he usually can't match the transplant New Yorkers that fill up Spectrum Center. Only this time, "The Hive" was alive with the sounds of Hornets fans.
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"It's finally paying off, all the years. But now it almost feels weird, like 'Oh my God, we're winning games,'" Cortes said in a telephone interview. "Forget about winning games, we're winning games by 20, 30 points, which is for us, the Charlotte fans, unbelievable and unreal."
Hornets, Charlotte NBA fans surge into postseason
During an NBA season in which potential trades and historic levels of tanking often superseded discussion of the actual games, the Charlotte Hornets are perhaps the league's most endearing story at the moment.
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After starting the year with a 4-14 record, the Hornets won more than 62% of their remaining games playing an aesthetically appealing style. They have the NBA's best offensive rating since Jan. 1 and rank among the top 10 in the league in NET rating. They feature the first rookie to lead the NBA in 3-pointers ( Kon Knueppel ) and an intriguing star point guard ( LaMelo Ball ) maturing alongside a lineup whose leading scorer is another homegrown draft pick ( Brandon Miller ). A promising front office executive (Jeff Peterson) hired one of the current favorites for NBA coach of the year (Charles Lee).
Charlotte will host its first NBA postseason game since 2016 against the Miami Heat as part of the NBA's play-in tournament on Tuesday, April 14. The Hornets will be the team no opponent in the East wants to face to begin the 2026 NBA playoffs. It's, in part, because they're the one galvanizing a city's basketball scene.
As the Hornets began to win this season, an entire fan base began to re-emerge.
"We talk about it every day. The Hornets are this city's first love. It was the first pro sports franchise in the city," said Kyle Bailey, host of "The Kyle Bailey Show" on WFNZ Radio in Charlotte and the Hornets pregame radio show. "It's just been such a long run of not just bad, but futile basketball, front office, all of it. It was almost like they tried to suck the life out of people here they were so bad. This is without a doubt the most connected people have been to this team in a long time."
The numbers back the sentiment up.
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The Hornets set a new single-season record for sellouts (25) at the Spectrum Center this season, including a record 15 in a row to close the regular season. The franchise went from 22nd in the NBA in attendance last year to 13th this season. They drew over 100,000 more fans to their games than two years ago, when the team ranked last in the NBA in total attendance.
Hornets have grabbed NBA's attention
It has conjured up memories of the original Hornets, who routinely led the league in attendance at the old Charlotte Coliseum as Larry Johnson , Alonzo Mourning and Dell Curry helped introduce the city to the NBA during the 1990s.
"This fan base has been waiting to just show up and support a team they can be proud of and I think they're seeing it now," said Curry, the former Hornets guard who now serves as a team ambassador and local broadcast analyst. "Even when the Hornets first got here, we didn't win a lot, but people understood we played hard and people wanted to come out and support and that feeling is here in the building and in the city right now."
Charlotte Hornets shooting guard Dell Curry (30) in action against the Utah Jazz at the Charlotte Coliseum during a 1994 game.
This postseason run could last just one game due to the single elimination format of the play-in tournament. The Hornets would still need to win a road game against either the Philadelphia 76ers or Orlando Magic to secure a spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs.
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But unlike previous years when the Hornets entered the postseason as a longshot, this appears to be the beginning of the organization's rise under new ownership after Michael Jordan sold his majority stake in the team in 2023 to a group led by private equity investors Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall. Only one player in the Hornets' starting lineup is older than 24 years old and they're all under contract at least through next season.
"I think this group has earned the respect or notoriety of the league," Lee said. "The last couple years haven't gone the way I think that we wanted, or that we would have hoped, and this year the progress that we made as individual players but also as a collective group and organization is definitely just raising people's attention levels to the Hornets."
Sometimes, he still has to remind them. Like before Sunday's win over the Knicks in the Hornets' regular season finale.
Knueppel said he and his teammates caught themselves reflecting on being at Madison Square Garden during the preseason, and how it didn't feel like much time had passed. In the locker room, however, Lee showed them the NBA standings when their record stood at 4-14 and where the NBA standings stand now.
He wanted them to remember just how long it has been.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hornets vs. Heat NBA play-in game: Inside Charlotte's fan revival
