Hard to say, looking back, but we thought it at the time.” “A lot of guys were playing out of position – we needed one or two more pieces – but I do agree. “I agree with Gatt,” Johnson said of projecting at least one conference finals appearance. 1 overall pick in the 1991 draft, buys that. Maybe this team wouldn’t have found a solution against those Jordan-Scottie Pippen teams, but Bogues and Gattison both say that group could have been as competitive as the Knicks, Pacers or Detroit Pistons were in the same span of the ’90s. That was an era when the Bulls, led by now-Hornets owner Michael Jordan, won six championships over eight seasons. We felt we could have been just as successful as any other team (in the East), even in those Chicago Bulls days,” he said. We were just starting to understand one another, starting to understand what playoffs were all about. We were on the rise,” said Bogues, whose tournament raised funds for at-risk youth ages 12 through 18. Point guard Bogues, an original Hornet who still calls Charlotte home, is convinced that first playoff team could have done great things over time. The Bobcats, who took back the Hornets’ nickname after the New Orleans franchise discarded it, has yet to win a series since the NBA returned to Charlotte in 2004. Never has an NBA team in Charlotte advanced beyond the second round. Each of the other three franchises added in the 1998 expansion – Miami, the Orlando Magic and the Minnesota Timberwolves – has reached a conference final at least once, with the Heat winning championships and the Magic losing in two NBA Finals. Players Bass acquired, such as Glen Rice from Miami and Anthony Mason from New York, became the core of later playoff teams.īut never again has an NBA team in Charlotte had that sort of star power. In each of those cases, then-general manager Bob Bass probably did the right thing by salvaging what he could from those assets. Gill was dealt to the Seattle SuperSonics in September 1993. Johnson suffered a career-changing back injury and was traded to the Knicks in the summer of 1996. In the fall of 1995, the Hornets traded Mourning to the Miami Heat, under pressure they would lose him without compensation once he reached free agency. We had two All-Stars and a great bench.”Īnd then, between money, ambition and injury, it all unraveled. “Back in those days you needed two All-Stars and a great bench. “We were right there – probably two player moves away,” Gattison said. “I honestly think if they would have kept that team together, we would have been playing the (Chicago) Bulls in the Eastern Conference finals,” said Kenny Gattison, who played for the Hornets from 1989 through 1995. That first playoff team upset the Boston Celtics at the end a run built by Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish before losing to the New York Knicks.īy then the Hornets were loaded with talent: They had a future Hall of Famer in center Alonzo Mourning, a rookie of the year and All-Star in Larry Johnson, and a wildly athletic shooting guard in Kendall Gill. That was the strong opinion of several members of the 1992-93 team who were back in Charlotte for point guard Muggsy Bogues’ charity golf tournament at Raintree Country Club. That would have happened long ago had the core of that first playoff team held together. Thirty years since the NBA first arrived in Charlotte, the Hornets have yet to reach the Eastern Conference final, much less the NBA Finals.
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