The Charlotte Hornets spent last season putting together one of their best runs ever by advanced metrics, and they posted their strongest winning percentage since 2015-2016. By record, it was the seventh-best season in franchise history.
Then came the response: a semi-teardown.
Charlotte moved LaMelo Ball, who by all accounts was central to the turnaround. The team also sent out Josh Green, an excellent bench piece, and Miles Bridges, the longest-tenured Hornet. For a club that just came off a winning season, that is a sharp turn.
That’s why the next step matters so much. The Hornets are expected to be a little worse after the additions they made, especially with Ball gone, even if the on-paper gap doesn’t look huge. But if the season goes sideways in a major way, the front office could be forced into decisions it would rather avoid.
One of those would involve Brandon Miller. If Charlotte’s lone season with him as the clear top option collapses, the team probably can’t justify giving him a max deal or anything close to it.
The problem is that Charlotte doesn’t have endless escape routes. Kon Knueppel is almost certainly safe, even if the team struggles, because he would still only have two NBA seasons under his belt. That’s too early to move on.
Coby White is another name to watch, though he just signed a three-year deal, so a trade would be unexpected even if it isn’t impossible. Moussa Diabaté could also be part of a sign-and-trade like Miller. Beyond that, the room to keep tearing things down gets pretty thin.
That leaves the Hornets in a tricky place. They’ve boxed themselves in a bit: not enough flexibility to fully reset again, but enough risk that a bad enough season could force their hand.
And the league’s new setup makes that even messier. The NBA is much more anti-tanking now, which means Charlotte couldn’t simply strip the roster down and count on landing a premium draft pick. A full sell-off could still leave them stuck in the first tier of the lottery system.
That’s why the nightmare scenario has to be truly ugly before it triggers anything dramatic. Charlotte would need to stay mostly healthy - as much as any team can - and still end up in the 20-win range for the front office to consider blowing more of it up.
A modest dip probably won’t do it. A serious slide might. And if that happens, the Hornets could be staring at another uncomfortable round of major changes.
In Other News...
Hornets Get A Painful Christmas Reminder About Their NBA Standing
Christmas Day has long been the NBAs showcase stage, the sort of calendar slot where contenders, stars and rivalry games get the spotlight. The Hornets have never been part of it, and this years schedule only sharpened that reminder as the league lined up high-profile teams while one of Charlottes most recognizable former faces, LaMelo Ball, was set to be featured elsewhere.
For a franchise still searching for the kind of national pull that earns those holiday invitations, the omission says plenty about where it sits in the league pecking order. Even with a player as marketable as Ball having once been the centerpiece in Charlotte, the Hornets remain outside the group the NBA trusts to carry one of its biggest regular-season days, and that gap is hard to miss when the Christmas slate drops. [Read more 🡒]
Hornets Enter 2026 With One Defining Question About Their Core
As Charlotte heads toward the 2026-27 season, the conversation around the roster is already centered on the same thing: which pieces can truly anchor the next version of this team. The Hornets have a core that includes rookies and younger holdovers, and the early evaluations are being shaped by Summer League flashes, past-season production and the natural hope that a few promising stretches can grow into something sturdier.
Still, the biggest challenge is separating what looked good in a small sample from what can actually carry over once the games matter. Summer League can point to strengths and reveal growth areas, but it can also mislead if it gets treated like a final verdict, which is why the Hornets next step is less about celebrating individual moments than figuring out which players belong in the long-term answer. [Read more 🡒]
Brandon Miller Just Took On A Bigger Hornets Reality
Brandon Miller has already become the centerpiece of the Hornets next chapter, and the latest sign of that is as plain as a video game rating. In NBA 2K27, Miller comes in at 85 overall and stands as Charlottes highest-rated player, a neat snapshot of how quickly the teams hierarchy has shifted after moving on from LaMelo Ball. After a season in which Miller played 65 games and put up 20.2 points, 4.9 rebounds and 3.3 assists per night, the Hornets are now looking at him less like a promising piece and more like the player around whom the roster has to make sense.
That reality brings real contract stakes with it this summer. Charlotte may look to work out a rookie-scale extension with Miller, but if that does not happen, he would be headed toward restricted free agency next summer. For a franchise trying to reset its identity, the timing matters, especially with Miller and Kon Knueppel now viewed as the faces of the team. The Hornets have already accepted that their future looks different than it did a year ago, and Millers next move will say plenty about how quickly that future can take shape. [Read more 🡒]