All new teams struggle out of the gate or at least get a footing when you first enter the league.
What happens when your team is a constant turnstile in terms of players coming in and out of Charlotte?
What excuses do you have left to give
Charlotte Hornets Media Day 1989-90
A lot has transpired since the offseason started. Well, I guess you can say the offseason started when the team hit the high mark of LAST Season when they came out of the gate at 10-5 to start the year... And then it all went down hill. It didn't matter what veterans were brought in to try and stop the leaking civ. It didn't matter what coaching adjustments were made. The team started at 10-5 and only won 24 more games the rest of the way and let a possible playoff birth slip by the wayside to the Chicago Bulls. All the props to them for turning their season around while ours fell down the drain.So what was there to be done? When the eventual champion was crowned, we ended up with the 10th pick in the draft after losing a tiebreaker with the Cleveland Cavaliers and selected a young Center from Yugoslavia with a ton of accomplishments from European Basketball in Vlade Divac. We hope that the culture and values of winning basketball crossed over the Atlantic Ocean to here in Charlotte and that he can be a building block for us for the long-term future with Hersey Hawkins. We had a lot of teams call about the # 10 pick and made some enticing offers to make us consider but we needed a future building block at the 5 and we're satisfied with how Vlade's been able to acclimate to America and grow within the community. He's a big hit.
Moving on from the draft, we had some holes on the roster that needed to be addressed and plenty of cap space to operate with. We threw out some offers to some pretty big fish during the FA pool and landed a few options that could provide us with plenty of depth as the season goes on. We're happy we brought back James Donaldson, Carey Scurry, & Darwin Cook, from last years team and added a bunch of fresh veteran faces like Frank Johnson, Steve Johnson (in a trade with Washington), & Brad Davis, in a trade with the Knicks. Speaking of that trade with the Knicks, we acquired Johnny Dawkins for what we hoped would be a future piece to build around Hawkins & Vlade with room to grow. We gave up a future draft asset to acquire him and Johnny Dawkins is still attempting to get comfortable here in Charlotte. He didn't respond to camp as much as we hoped and in fact, most of the team treated Training Camp like it was a vacation.
We'll address these issues and more in the coming days but we're hopeful that James Donaldson will be a good mentor to Vlade while he's here to give him the time to develop here in SLOE. Hersey Hawkins will still be one of the leaders of this team going forward and with the addition of Craig Hodges, his shooting should help us most nights have a distinct advantage from 3 to help this squad expand it's offensive game. We'll open the floor to questions from the media and hopefully some eternal optimism for the season ahead.
