Charlotte needs a pro sports winner, but who hits .500 first: Hornets, Panthers or MLS?
The Charlotte Hornets won a game Tuesday night, which was a welcome bit of news for a city whose pro sports fans have seen an awful lot of losing lately.
The Hornets started an eight-game losing streak during the first week in January. They began that slide one week after the Carolina Panthers ended a dubious 2019 season with their own eight-game losing streak.
Finally, the Hornets put a temporary halt to all those L’s. Terry Rozier had 30 points and 10 rebounds Tuesday and Charlotte edged the New York Knicks, 97-92.
“The record might not look like it, but we’re working toward something,” Rozier said later in Charlotte’s locker room.
It would be a relief if he’s right.
The city of Charlotte really needs a winner. This state of purgatory — and that’s putting it kindly — really isn’t much fun for anybody.
The Hornets are 16-31, arrowing straight toward their fourth straight losing season despite Tuesday’s feel-good respite.
The Panthers went 5-11 in 2019, just hired a new coach after firing their old one and also just lost one of the three best players they’ve ever had with Luke Kuechly’s surprise retirement. Of Charlotte’s three highest-level sports teams, only the Major League Soccer franchise hasn’t been getting routinely drilled lately — and that’s because the MLS team doesn’t even have an official name yet and won’t start playing real games in Charlotte until early 2021.
While only the MLS team is officially an expansion club, in reality it feels a lot like all three Charlotte teams are. (Note: I realize the Charlotte Checkers won a hockey championship last season, but for the purposes of this column, I am concentrating only on the three Charlotte pro teams that play at the top level of their respective sports).
So let me ask you a question. Which of those three teams — the Panthers, the Hornets or the MLS team — will next post a season that ends in a winning record? Who goes over .500 first?
If you’re not sure, join the crowd. It’s hard to imagine Matt Rhule’s first Panthers team going from 5-11 to 9-7 or better in 2020, especially given the unsettled quarterback situation.
The Hornets? They look like they’re going to go really young for the rest of the year, which makes sense, but will this group have the talent to win more than half their games in 2020-21? And MLS? Who knows? Atlanta’s MLS team sprinted out of the gate with a winning season as an expansion team in 2017 and then won the league championship the next year, but that was an anomaly.
Of course, anything can happen, and it sometimes does in pro sports (take this year’s San Francisco 49ers, for instance).
But when will it happen again here?
When will one of these pro teams actually harness a thunderstorm, like the Panthers did during 2015 or the Hornets did during roughly the same time period, going 48-34 in 2015-16 and then taking the Miami Heat to seven games in a first-round playoff series?
“Obviously, we’re young,” said Rozier, who along with fellow guard Devonte Graham provides the lion’s share of scoring for this Hornets team. “Being in the playoffs for four years straight (as Rozier was with the Boston Celtics) — it starts in the locker room, when you cherish every day and you really get something out of it.”
Rozier, who at 25 counts as a veteran for these Hornets, said his young teammates “all want to get better.” Graham certainly has been a revelation this season, and rookie P.J. Washington looks promising. But too many of the other youngsters — Malik Monk, Dwayne Bacon, Willy Hernangomez — bounce in and out of the rotation with inconsistent performances.
The Hornets’ path to greatness likely involves getting lucky in the draft lottery, and that (cue up a deep sigh lamenting Anthony Davis here) hasn’t been their forte.
These current Hornets can be entertaining to watch — they took Milwaukee to the wire in Paris recently, and they won on Tuesday even with a sick Graham contributing only five points, 13 fewer than his average.
But a consistent winner?
This Hornets team isn’t close to that.
So practice your patience, fans. For the next year or two, no matter what Charlotte pro team you follow, it’s going to come in very handy.
This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 1:00 AM.
