The rumor had been circulating for weeks and Michael Jordan finally recorded the sale of its shares in Hornets. Thirteen years after his arrival as owner of Charlottewhen the franchise was still called “Bobcats”, he decided to step back, leaving control of the team to Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall.
From February 2010 to June 2023, in North Carolina, the management career of “MJ” will not have been as successful as what he was able to know as a player. Meanwhile, in thirteen seasons, the Bocats.Hornets have only qualified twice for the playoffs, without spending a single turn. From 2010/11 to 2022/23, only Wolves, Kings, Pistons and Magic have also failed to win a single playoff series…
More generally, still over the same period, Charlotte has a balance sheet of 426 victories and 608 defeats, that is to say a percentage of success of barely 41.2%. Again, we only find Minnesota (39.2%), Sacramento (39.1%), Orlando (38.3%) and Detroit (37.4%) behind, in the Top 5 dunces in the league.
Mediocre sportingly, financially prosperous
Very mediocre results therefore, caused by the lack of attractiveness of the franchise, with only Al Jefferson (2013), Lance Stephenson (2014), Jeremy Lin (2015), Tony Parker (2018) and Kelly Oubre Jr. (2021) as major reinforcements to the “free agency”, while the few transfers made (Nicolas Batum, Dwight Howard, Terry Rozier, Gordon Hayward, etc.) have not been great successes either for his general managers successive (Rod Higgins, Rich Cho then Mitch Kupchak).
In the Draft, we can’t say that the Hornets were hollow either, since the list of their “lottery picks” enlisted since 2010 certainly includes some successes, but mainly failures: Kemba Walker (#9), Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (#2), Cody Zeller (#4), Noah Vonleh (#9), Frank Kaminsky (#9), Malik Monk (#11), Miles Bridges (#12), PJ Washington (#12), LaMelo Ball (#3) and James Bouknight (#11).
The advantage is that Michael Jordan was able to line his pockets financially, because he bought the Bobcats for $275 million in 2010 and is now selling his majority shares in the franchise. for about… $3 billion. Not far from a valuation multiplied by 11 compared to its initial bet!
Better ranking? 6th in Eastern Conference
Everything is therefore not to be thrown away for “MJ” even if, sportingly, basketball fans necessarily expected more from a team belonging to him.
In the end, we will especially remember this 2015/16 season where the teammates of Kemba Walker and Nicolas Batum finished in 6th place in the Eastern Conference, winning the fifth best record in the history of Charlotte (48-34), before losing in seven games against the Heat in the first round of the playoffs.
Conversely, it is also difficult not to mention this shortened and historically bad 2011/12 season, where the Bobcats of a certain Boris Diaw had recorded only 7 small victories in… 66 games. In other words, the worst percentage of success (10.6%) of all time!
To launch a new era, without Michael Jordan therefore, the Hornets will now continue to rely on LaMelo Ball and their 2nd choice of Draft 2023: Scoot Henderson or Brandon Miller?
