Kemba Walker has been with Charlotte through the worst of the worst – a laughingstock phase when the team set the NBA record for worst winning percentage for a season, the term “Bobcatting” becoming a euphemism for lousy play, and some joking that team owner Michael Jordan was still the best player in the franchise even as he moved into his 50s. Walker mostly ignored the corny cracks, focusing instead on the role he could play in the turnaround and how he could apply pressure on the organization to get better players to help win games.

View photos Kemba Walker's numbers are up all across the board. (Getty Images) More

"People are always going to say things about the organization because we weren’t doing too well. It wasn’t a big deal at all," Walker recently told The Vertical about what it takes to get through tough times in the NBA. "It's all about patience. It's tough, but a lot of teams go through bad years. To me, it's all about the guys who stay patient but keep working hard on their games. They're the only ones who can change it."

Walker is beginning to benefit from that approach in his fifth season and is now the leader of the Eastern Conference’s most low-profile contender, a team that only needs to win two of its final eight games to post the best record since Charlotte was awarded an expansion franchise in 2004.

The Hornets got Walker the help he needed after a dramatic offseason roster revamp. He also helped himself by making a slight alteration to his jump shot. And soon, Walker will be back on the big stage – a place on which he has always felt comfortable, from his days dancing at the legendary Apollo as a kid in New York, to leading Connecticut to a national title in 2011 in one of the greatest one-man shows in NCAA history. Watching the playoffs from his couch last year served as a reminder of where he belongs.

"I’m tired of not being in the playoffs. I’m tired of having to watch the first round at home, not being a part of it," Walker told The Vertical. "It’s a fun time for basketball. You know you get some national notoriety, of course. You want to be seen. You want to have fun. You want to play at the highest level. I don’t want to be there one year and then next year not make it. I want to be there every year."

Walker got to taste the postseason two years ago in coach Steve Clifford’s first season. But the success of that campaign proved unsustainable because it basically required big games from Walker or Al Jefferson and praying for the rest to fall into place. And the Hornets were forced to try something else after last season, the first year without the Bobcats moniker, when Walker, Jefferson and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist all battled injuries and Lance Stephenson zapped the remaining joy from the locker room.

Clifford closely studied last season's playoffs and realized that the four teams that reached the conference semifinals – Golden State, Cleveland, Houston and Atlanta – all ranked among the top five in 3-point percentage, with the other team being the Los Angeles Clippers. The Hornets ranked dead last in that category last season, prompting general manager Rich Cho to revamp the roster, beginning with a couple of significant predraft trades.

Charlotte dumped Stephenson, replaced him with Nicolas Batum, and added Jeremy Lin to relieve Walker from all of the playmaking duties. Batum will likely garner a maximum contract this summer after proving to be the versatile facilitator and defensive ace the Hornets expected when they acquired him from Portland before the draft. Lin has offered wacky hairdos and flashes of that memorable three-week period in which he owned New York.

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