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Bringing Back the Buzz: New Charlotte Hornets Aim to Match Magic of Old Hornets
October 29, 2014
When the new Charlotte Hornets open the 2014-15 NBA season Wednesday night at home against the Milwaukee Bucks, the team would like to replicate virtually everything the old Charlotte Hornets captured on opening night for the franchise on Nov. 4, 1988.
Except, of course, for the final score.
The old Charlotte Hornets lost the very first game the franchise ever played by 40 points, 133-93, to the Cleveland Cavaliers, long before anyone had heard of LeBron James. And yet those Hornets received a standing ovation for it from a sellout crowd at the old Charlotte Coliseum, which has since been torn down and replaced by the more modern Time Warner Cable Arena.
“We got our asses kicked the first night, but it was a lot of fun,” said Kelly Tripucka, the starting small forward who led the Hornets in scoring that first season, averaging 22.6 point per game.
Thus began a love affair between the Hornets and the city of Charlotte that lasted from 1988 until somewhere around 1998, when then-team owner George Shinn first began refusing to pay several star players what they considered their market value. The stars left, and the previously loyal fanbase grew disenchanted.
His popularity once comparable to a rock star within city limits, Shinn and Charlotte would soon divorce bitterly. He threatened to move the Hornets if the city wouldn’t build him a new arena, then found himself embroiled in a sex scandal that sullied his image and sent his local political pull plummeting even further.
After selling out for the first 364 home games in franchise history—the equivalent of nearly nine full seasons—and leading the NBA in attendance in seven of those years, the bottom finally fell out in 2000-01. At the end of that season, one that saw the Hornets win 44 games and advance to the semifinals of the Eastern Conference playoffs, the team ranked 29th in the NBA in attendance.
Shinn felt he had no choice but to move the team to New Orleans, taking the Hornets’ nickname with him.
“It was up and down that year with attendance, because the fans knew we were either going to get a new arena or the team was getting ready to move,” said Baron Davis, then the team’s starting point guard.
Mostly, though, attendance was down.
“It was extremely awkward for us players and coaches, who were caught in the middle,” Davis said. “I was on the team for the game we played when 500 people showed up. It was in the middle of the winter, and it snowed. That was my first time driving in the snow, and it took me an extra hour to get to the gym.
“We ran out for the game, and there were 200 people in the stands. They had said the game might get delayed because of the snow, so we were like, ‘Oh, they’re just trying to get here.’ But we started the game and by the end of the first quarter, there were maybe 500 people there. No more came. And everybody could hear everything everybody else in the building was saying. That was the first NBA game I had ever been a part of where the coaches had to whisper.”
Now, after 12 years of the Hornets’ nickname belonging to the NBA team relocated to New Orleans and 10 years after the NBA awarded the city of Charlotte a new expansion franchise that took on the “Bobcats” moniker, the Hornets’ name and Charlotte are being reunited.
The New Orleans team petitioned to change its nickname to “Pelicans” beginning this season, whereupon the Charlotte franchise immediately jumped on the chance to regain its old, beloved name.
To say the team and the city appear to be fired up about it is an understatement, according to Dell Curry.
“I’m extremely excited. Everyone here is,” said Curry, who was a shooting guard on the first Hornets team and now serves as analyst on the team’s television broadcasts. “That was the initial name of the franchise, and when the organization was thinking about bringing the name back, I had some people tell me they didn’t think that would make that big of a difference. I told them I disagreed, that I thought it would. I told them, ‘That’s a name people grew up knowing and associated this NBA franchise with.’
“Once they announced that they would change the name back to the Hornets, the people who told me they didn’t think it would make that big of a difference came back to me and said, ‘You were right. We had no idea.’ As a former Hornet player, you could feel in the community on a daily basis how they feel about the team and the players and the name. I knew the level of excitement that it would bring.”
Sleepy Floyd, a former NBA player who never played for the Hornets but grew up in nearby Gastonia, N.C., and now does community service work for the franchise, said the enthusiasm showed during last weekend’s two-day “Buzz Fest” where he and a number of former Hornets players, including Tripucka, Curry, Mike Gminski, J.R. Reid and Johnny Newman, made appearances and signed autographs.
“Most of the fans here are emotionally vested in the Hornets’ name and the team and that great tradition that they had,” Floyd said. “There is an energy in this city, an excitement, leading up to this first game. People are happy to have that name back and it brings a lot of good memories back for a lot of people in the area.
“I tell you what, they’re happy to have the name back…I think everyone is looking forward now and not looking back, and that’s a great thing.”
Well, sometimes it’s still fun to look back at some of the good times involving the former Hornets. Reid, for instance, recalled fondly playing before the big crowds at the old Charlotte Coliseum, as did Tripucka and Curry.
“For all the youngsters who don’t know about it, the place was phenomenal,” Reid said. “The energy that was generated in that old coliseum, it made it one of the best arenas in the league. We were constantly leading the league in attendance, even though we were getting our butts beat most of the time.
“But those fans pulled for us so hard, they kept us in a lot of games a lot of nights against teams that were obviously better than us. That energy from the old coliseum has been missed with this new franchise. But I think now with the old colors back, and all the new additions they’ve made to the roster, they’re gearing up to get that same energy back that they first had with the old Charlotte Hornets name.”
Curry said the excitement building in the city over this year’s season opener seems similar to what he experienced in 1988.
“We as players wondered during that first game if they would be able to sustain that level of excitement going forward—because we knew we weren’t going to win a lot of games,” said Curry, who watched from the bench in street clothes that night because he was recovering from a broken wrist injury.
“We lost by 40, and everybody stayed from the opening tip to the last second that ticked off the clock. Then they gave us a standing ovation as we walked off the court, having lost by 40. That’s when we said to ourselves, ‘Yeah, they’re here to stay.’ You knew then it was going to be something special.”
Tripucka had a similar recollection.
“It was unbelievable,” Tripucka said. “We got blown out and after the game, we were standing around, disappointed in ourselves and thinking, ‘Well, no one’s going to come to the games now.’ And the fans were all standing and cheering. And my first thought was, ‘Why are they standing and giving the Cavaliers a standing ovation?’ But then the Cavaliers left the court, and they were still standing and cheering, and that’s when we knew it was for us.
“That’s when we knew it could be something special.”
If that wasn’t enough to convince him, the 363 consecutive sellouts that followed at the old Charlotte Coliseum—which continued long after he retired—certainly were.
“I think everyone, coming off that first game, despite the results they were entertained. Pro basketball was here, and they had an opportunity to see what it was like, with the atmosphere and the crowd noise,” Tripucka said. “It became a place to be, a place to go. It became a hot ticket, and everyone wanted to go see the Hornets play to get a piece of it. I think it just took off from there.
“It was like going to the theater. You had to be there, you had to experience it yourself. There was a waiting list for tickets and people were always asking around town if anyone knew how they could get a ticket to get in. It took on a whole persona of its own, and pretty much everyone in town was hooked.”
He said he agrees with Curry that it can be like that again for the NBA team in Charlotte.
“The organization should be very proud and should be given a hand for what they’ve done. I think it’s a great move, a very smart move,” Tripucka said. “I think this is where the Hornets belong. I think this is where their fanbase has always been.”
All information and quotes for this article were obtained firsthand.
Joe Menzer has written about the NBA for more than two decades and even covered the first game the Charlotte Hornets ever played in 1988. He now writes about pro and college basketball and other sports for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @OneMenz.