Charlotte Hornets, owner Michael Jordan assemble to assemble Florence relief boxes

Tuesday, the Charlotte Hornets assemble for training camp. Friday, they assembled for hurricane relief.

Specifically, they assembled boxes of food: non-perishable items, such as cereal and canned goods, provided by Food Lion at Second Harvest food bank for shipment to areas in North and South Carolina ravaged by the recent landfall of Hurricane Florence.

Players, coaches, front-office personnel and business-side employees pitched in in a day-long effort with a goal of 5,000 boxes. Team owner Michael Jordan, who grew up in Wilmington - heavily damaged by Florence - participated, then met with media to encourage ongoing response to the destruction.

“It touches all of us in one way or another; me being from Wilmington, it’s easy to see where the correlation happens. It doesn’t take much to get us moving in the right direction to start lending a hand,” said Jordan, who announced earlier in the week he would contribute $2 million to hurricane response.

That will come in the form of separate $1 million contributions to the American Red Cross and the Foundation for the Carolinas Florence Response Fund. The intent of that two-pronged approach is initial relief, such as food and shelter, via the Red Cross and long-term efforts at recovery via the Foundation for the Carolinas.

Jordan still has family in and around Wilmington. Pictures of the storm’s destruction in places he frequented growing up moved him.

“I wanted to be the first one to jump out because this is home,” said Jordan, who starred at North Carolina before going on to an iconic NBA career.

Jordan reinforced a point he made in an interview with the Observer Wednesday, that the damage isn’t over, with some rivers still flooding from the flow of prior rain, and it’s crucial this doesn’t become an out-of-sight/out-of-mind dynamic in a week or a month.

“Even though the rain has stopped, it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Jordan said.

Jordan said he kept hearing and seeing towns where he played high school basketball, such as New Bern and Jacksonville, with growing destruction.

“I didn’t think I’d hear my old stomping grounds on the national news,” Jordan said. “To see all that on TV, and see what they’re going through; I miss (home), but I didn’t want to see it under these circumstances. It resonated, so that my actions speak loud.”

Jordan said he wants to visit Wilmington to show his support for his hometown once infrastructure is restored enough that the presence of visitors wouldn’t impede recovery efforts.

This story was originally published August 20, 2018 at 1:13 PM with the headline "Charlotte Hornets, owner Michael Jordan assemble to assemble Florence relief boxes."