3/9/2023 0 Comments 1998 charlotte hornets rosterWe’ll talk about this team’s roster in a bit, but the Hornets won 54 games in 1997 and 51 in ’98 despite losing the two guys who were their biggest stars earlier in the decade. Mourning was gone, sent to Miami after the 1995 season for a bunch of who-dats and Glen Rice. Johnson was gone, traded to the Knicks in 1996 for Brad Lohaus and Anthony Mason. Into this milieu dropped the ’98 Hornets. Any team that didn’t have Michael Jordan on it couldn’t carry the West’s jock even in the ’90s-those Lakers, Blazers, Suns, Sonics, and Jazz all would’ve beaten teams like the Knicks and Pacers conversely, Jordan’s Bulls would’ve beaten the Rockets in 1994 and ’95. Sure, they got clobbered by the Lakers and Spurs, but back then, that was just the Western Conference kicking the East in the teeth, something they’d done on a league-wide basis at least since Magic Johnson was still around. Remember how I ragged on the Nets for having 50 wins as their franchise high-water mark? At least they made the NBA Finals twice. Let’s take a look at this super-duper team, shall we? The On-Court Record Not great, never contenders-especially with Michael Jordan around-but good enough to earn their way onto national television and even have a couple of legit star players like Larry Johnson and Alonzo Mourning.Īll this climaxed in 1998 with 51 regular-season wins and a trip to the second round of the playoffs-which to this day is still the deepest into the playoffs the franchise has ever gone, having never made a conference finals in the old days or the new. The expansion Hornets have just three playoff appearances, no playoff series wins, and the worst regular-season record in NBA history (7-59 in 2012.) The expansion Browns have two playoff appearances, one playoff game win, and the worst regular-season record in NFL history (0-16 in 2017, along with the 2008 Lions the only two winless seasons since the NFL went to 16 games in 1978.)īut the Hornets were actually good in the ’90s. Which is a good thing, because the Hornets, since their reincarnation in 2004 as the Bobcats before getting their name back in 2014, have been almost as bad as the post-1999 Browns. The Charlotte Hornets are, like the Cleveland Browns in the NFL, a team that has the odd distinction of owning the history of a team that relocated to another city and being able to apply that history and franchise record to its current expansion iteration.
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