Since it was re-introduced into the league as the “Bobcats” in 2004, Charlotte’s NBA franchise has been largely mired in a pit of despair. The Bobcats were, for all intents and purposes, a rich-man’s version of the Sacramento Kings: directionless and inept, but able to win a few more games than their miserable counterparts on the West Coast.

The season that Michael Jordan bought the franchise, the Bobcats crested and made the playoffs in the 2009–2010 season, riding Gerald Wallace and Stephen Jackson’s combined 80 minutes per game to 44 wins and the East’s 7th seed. But as the team soon found out, Wallace and Jackson weren’t just the pilots of Charlotte’s success. They were the zeppelin itself.

Gerald Wallace (right) and Stephen Jackson (left) were Frodo and Sam, carrying the Charlotte Bobcats to Mordor, before Gerald Wallace got eaten by Orcs.

And when horrific injuries — four concussions, a partially collapsed lung, and a fractured rib — caught up to a 28-year-old Wallace and his performance slipped, a thread was pulled that unraveled the entire organization.

Wallace was traded in February of 2011 for nothing and two first-round draft picks that the Charlotte front office managed to turn into nothing.

The actual return for Wallace was Dante Cunningham, who signed with Memphis the following off-season, Sean Marks, who was promptly waived by Charlotte, and Joel Pryzbilla, who re-signed with the Trail Blazers mere months after being traded away. Charlotte also received New Orleans’s 2011 first round pick, as well as Portland’s 2014 first round pick.

Charlotte turned the 2011 pick into near-All-Star Tobias Harris, which it promptly packaged with Shaun Livingston and an unhappy Stephen Jackson to send to Milwaukee for 32-year-old Corey Maggette and the 7th pick in the 2011 draft.

And with that pick, Charlotte looked at Kawhi Leonard, Klay Thompson, Tobias Harris, and Jimmy Butler, and instead took Bismack Biyombo, whose age remains as opaque as his offensive ability.

Charlotte used Milwaukee’s 2014 pick on Shabazz Napier with Bogdan Bogdanovic and Nikola Jokic still on the board, and traded Napier to Miami for PJ Hairston and Miami’s 2019 second round pick. Napier turned into a backup point guard. The ever-troubled Hairston last played for the Rio Grande Valley Vipers of the NBA G League.

Meanwhile in Charlotte, with the trades of Wallace and Jackson, and the departure of Raymond Felton, things continued to spiral out of control. Boris Diaw got fat and moved to San Antonio, Tyrus Thomas’s college brilliance never translated to the NBA, and first-round picks DJ Augustin and Gerald Henderson never lived up to their billing.

All of this culminated in a strike-shortened 2011–2012 season in which the Bobcats struggled through, in terms of winning percentage, the worst season in the history of the NBA.

Oh, the humanity.

The Sad Reality

In spite of sinking deeper than any NBA team has sunk before, there was hope yet for Charlotte. Rookie Kemba Walker had shown flashes of what was to come, human lamppost Bismack Biyombo had swatted away nearly two shots per game in his first season on a basketball court, and Gerald Henderson, who led the team in points, was bound to become a better three-point shooter.

Most of all though, there was one shining, glorious beacon of hope for the franchise. The 2012 NBA Draft was approaching, and declaring for the draft was a lanky 6'11" forward from Kentucky: a generational talent named Anthony Davis whose prospects were mentioned in the same breath as Kevin Durant and LeBron James.

Anthony Davis: once, briefly, the Great Unibrowed Hope of Charlotte.

At this point the story is infamy: the city that took the Hornets from Charlotte also had the ping-pong balls bounce their way, and took Anthony Davis from Charlotte too. Charlotte took Davis’s teammate at Kentucky, a hyper-athletic wing with a broken jump shot that the team hoped to fix (it didn’t). One pick later, the Wizards selected their star shooting guard Bradley Beal.

And ever since then, Charlotte has stumbled in the NBA draft, taking Cody Zeller over CJ McCollum, Giannis Antetokoumpo, and Rudy Gobert in 2013, turning down Boston’s godfather offer of four first-round picks so that the team could select Frank Kaminsky (over Devin Booker) in 2015, and trading first-rounder Malachi Richardson for 30-year-old Marco Belinelli in 2016.

The Noah Vonleh pick in 2014 is defensible, considering it brought back the ever-underrated Nicolas Batum to be Kemba Walker’s running partner. But Charlotte misstepped when, assuming the salary cap would continue to rise, it signed Batum to five years, $120 million. One year later, Batum tore his UCL in his left elbow and hasn’t been the same since.

And though it is still early, it looks like Charlotte caved in on itself once again in the 2017 draft, passing up their pre-draft darling Donovan Mitchell for Malik Monk, who whined to the media on draft night that New York didn’t take him.

Donovan Mitchell has gone on to become a sensation in Utah, and looks to be in prime position to win the Rookie of the Year. Malik Monk has shot 33% this year in Charlotte, and has spent time with the now-Hornets’ G League affiliate, the Greensboro Swarm.

Despite reaching the playoffs in 2013–2014 and 2015–2016, the Hornets have been done-in due to a combination of draft missteps, general jettisoning of NBA talent to other teams, and salary cap self-sabotage — they are paying Dwight Howard, Nic Batum, Marvin Williams, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, and Cody Zeller a combined $85 million this year.

Phrased another way, they are paying Dwight Howard.

Now, the Hornets sit at tenth place in a very weak Eastern Conference, hovering around ten games under .500. Kemba Walker has fashioned himself into a bonafide All-Star, and Jeremy Lamb has become a legitimate 3-and-D wing, but there is little hope for optimism elsewhere on a roster so bloated by unwieldy contracts that its only trade deadline deal was for Knicks bench-ridden center Willy Hernangomez.

An Alternate Reality

But what if, in that fateful 2012 draft lottery, the ping-pong balls had come up Charlotte? What if Anthony Davis was the Charlotte Hornet That Was Promised?

It’s impossible to project the growth of individual players in this alternate reality. For instance, Kemba Walker was surrounded by an utter dearth of NBA talent his first few years in the league. Thrust into being the focal point of the Charlotte offense in his second year in the league, Walker’s growth was anything but linear. He broke out in 2015–2016 and earned his first All-Star bid a season later. Did his growth come from being The Man so early on? Or would his growth have been expedited with Anthony Davis at his side?

I would bet on the latter.

Davis, who earned his first All-Star bid during his second season, probably would have progressed at roughly the same rate sharing the court with Walker, as he did sharing the court with Jrue Holiday. And as Walker progressed, they could have formed a much deadlier tandem than the one Davis currently shares with Holiday.

Kemba Walker and Anthony Davis together — the mind boggles.

2013

Charlotte would have had a rough season in 2012–2013, with the rookie Davis, sophomore Walker, and fourth-year pro Gerald Henderson leading the team. They won 21 games in reality, and probably would have only won a few more with Davis. Assuming they flip-flop picks with New Orleans and pick sixth in 2013, the Hornets would have had their point guard in Walker, their franchise cornerstone and big-man in Davis, and would be looking for a wing.

Would they have taken CJ McCollum? Would they have felt comfortable in the foundation of their team and gambled on Giannis? It’s probably more likely that they would have taken Ben McLemore. But what if he were off the board? The 2013 draft was considered weak even at the time — it might have enticed Charlotte to take a risk.

In terms of free agents, Davidson-product Stephen Curry was restricted, battling ankle injuries, and playing the same position as Kemba Walker. It’s possible, but unlikely that he would have come to Charlotte. Same goes for former Wake Forest Demon Deacon Chris Paul, who would have probably wanted to stay in L.A. and continue the Lob City experiment.

More likely is that Charlotte would have put in a bid for either injury-riddled Andrew Bynum or one of Utah’s free agents: DeMarre Carroll, Paul Millsap, and actual Hornet Al Jefferson. Millsap does some of the same things that Davis does, who was against the idea of moving to the center position. So it’s completely plausible that Charlotte, in need of a rebounding center and third offensive banana, still signs Jefferson. Even in the unfortunate instance that Charlotte were to sign Bynum to a short-term contract, it would by no means be debilitating.

2014

Fast-forwarding one year, this thought experiment is getting hazy and a little dicey. To recap so far: the Hornets definitely have Anthony Davis, who has just been named to his first All-Star team, and Kemba Walker, who has progressed nicely with an All-Star forward to run pick-and-rolls with. The Hornets might have drafted CJ McCollum or Giannis Antetokoumpo, or they might have drafted Ben McLemore. And in free agency, the Hornets might have splurged on Al Jefferson and DeMarre Carroll, or they might have signed Andrew Bynum to a short-term deal.

Depending on who Charlotte drafted and signed, the Hornets could have picked anywhere from 9th (their actual position, where they selected Noah Vonleh) and 20th in the 2014 draft, assuming they were a fringe playoff team. This draft was a gold mine of mid-range draft prospects, producing NBA regulars Zach LaVine, Dario Saric, TJ Warren, Jusuf Nurkic, Gary Harris, and Rodney Hood — all of whom went between 12th and 23rd in the actual 2014 draft.

Nurkic could have easily been the pick — especially if Charlotte signed Bynum the Summer before and regretted it. He would have supplied Charlotte with a bruiser to put next to Davis and ease Davis’s responsibilities down low.

If Charlotte had signed Jefferson though, the Hornets would probably be looking for another wing. LaVine would have given them a combo guard with a lot of bounce. Saric would have given them playmaking — but would they have waited on him to come overseas? It’s probably more likely that Charlotte would have taken either Gary Harris, the young 3-and-D wing from Michigan State, or Rodney Hood, the local sweet-shooting wing from Duke.

Beyond

By now, this scenario has far too many permutations. But even assuming the likelihood of draft-misses (Ben McLemore) and free agents fitting the moderate Charlotte profile (Al Jefferson), the Charlotte Bobcats would have been re-branded to the Hornets before the 2014–2015 season, and could have very easily entered the season with a core of Anthony Davis, Kemba Walker, Al Jefferson, and Rodney Hood. With a little bit of luck, CJ McCollum or Giannis Antetokoumpo.

At this point, they would have been similar to today’s Milwaukee Bucks: young, fun, talented, and an unlikely-yet-definite destination city for those trying to win a championship. Their lottery days would be over, their roster would be not only competitive, but sustainable as well. Davis would soon be an MVP candidate, Walker would soon make his first All-Star Game, and Charlotte, armed with free agent mercenaries and deft trade acquisitions, would eventually be a threat to LeBron James’s Cleveland Cavaliers. Soon, Anthony Davis would lead Charlotte to the NBA Finals.

Even with the natural misses that come in the crapshoot of the NBA draft, and the potential water-logged contracts that come in free agency, Charlotte would have been able to make up for because it had Anthony Davis, The Charlotte Hornet Who Was Promised. Talent attracts talent; talent fixes all things broken, and the New Orleans Pelicans should know — they’ve been patching holes around Davis for years.

And that’s the sad reality of it for the Charlotte Hornets. The ping-pong balls came up New Orleans on that night in 2012, and Anthony Davis went to New Orleans. The Hornets have been trying to make up for that ever since.

Yes, the team has been mismanaged. It paid an aging core far too much. It got unlucky with Nic Batum’s injury. It made a few draft mistakes. Now, it’s paying for all of that, literally and figuratively, with an overpaid roster that has already seen its peak.

But Charlotte’s greatest sin perhaps, was simply not winning the lottery.