I’ll preface this whole article by saying up front that I know this is loser talk. And I know a lot of Charlotte Hornets fans are tired of looking for silver linings and hoping that next time will be better. But when the team is bad, that’s all you can do.

I originally started this before the Celtics game fully expecting a demoralizing loss that would sap any hope from even the most optimistic of Hornets fans. Then the Hornets won that game, so I shelfed this post. Three wins and 11 losses later, it’s time to break this back out.

You don’t need me to tell you how bad this season has been. There’s no one person or thing to blame. The easy and very valid excuse is the team’s injury situation. They haven’t had their full roster for basically a season and a half now, so it’s really hard to truly know what the team’s ceiling is and how the pieces would fit together. That said, big changes need to be made, and there’s never been a better time to be optimistic about those changes.

Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin were approved as new owners of the Charlotte Hornets on July 23rd. That’s much too late in the offseason to make any sweeping changes to the organizational structure, so they were always going to ride this current season out with what they had. But new owners tend to make their mark before too long. Matt Ishbia pushed for the Suns to trade for Kevin Durant just a few days after becoming owner of the team. Jazz owner Ryan Smith oversaw a massive teardown of the team after seeing just two seasons of middle tier playoff success. Prior to his arrival, the organization had been content in that standing for decades.

The Hornets haven’t had the success to justify keeping the current front office around like the Suns or the roster assembled as is like the Jazz did for an extra season. It feels like a foregone conclusion that Steve Clifford, Mitch Kupchak, and most of their support staff will be let go after this season. That’s tough for the people that work in the shadows and grind out many thankless hours. But I don’t think there’s much defense for keeping either of the two top dogs. Steve Clifford wasn’t even supposed to be the coach of this team; he’s only here because Kenny Atkinson pulled out of a deal to become the team’s head coach in 2022. Under his watch, the team has regressed from what it was under James Borrego, and that’s its own whole post for a different day. Meanwhile Mitch Kupchak seems to have set his general manager mode to autopilot for the last couple of seasons.

If the staleness of the organization wasn’t enough on its own to force a change, the results of this season certainly are. Every Hornets loss makes it more and more obvious what needs to happen. The Hornets are 7-20 and have barely looked competitive in recent games. It was always going to take a stellar, overachieving season for Clifford and Kupchak to keep their jobs. This season has been anything but that. So with every dreadful performance and painful loss, there’s solace in the fact that it’s one step closer to clean slate.

It’s something we’ve dealt with before as fans of this organization. The team has churned through coaches and to a lesser extent general managers. That always brings about hope, though the repeated failings of those hires can make it hard to look forward to new beginnings anymore. That’s especially true when the owner that’s calling the shots has such a shoddy track record of hiring the right guys and a much better track record of hiring his friends and acquaintances. And that’s where this time is different. There are new owners that are trying to make their impression on this organization and this fan base. That doesn’t mean they’ll be good, but they’ll have that new job motivation. That’s more than we’ve been able to count on in recent memory.

I think there was some apprehension about the Plotkin and Schnall ownership group. Both seem like your typical run-of-the-mill business guys that don’t have very strong ties to the Charlotte area. However, they’ve said all the right things in their press conferences, and as far as I can tell, they’re as big of NBA fans as they claim to be. They’ve rattled off the successes of other organizations and name dropped players that aren’t ESPN media darlings. They seem to pay attention, and they seem to care. That’s more important than people might realize. They don’t have to be NBA lifers that know the game like a general manager or a head coach. They just need to have an idea of what has worked for other teams and what hasn’t. They need to want to be good. They need to be willing to push the envelope and be aggressive.

We won’t know for sure how much of those traits these guys have until we have more time and decisions to evaluate. For now, we know nothing for sure. But we can view that as a positive. In the previous situation, the Hornets could hit the reset button on their front office and coaching staff, then we’d all have to endure discussions about what former Tar Heel and/or retread Michael Jordan was going to hire. Those conversations won’t happen this time. The Hornets can hit the reset button on their whole organization, and we’ll have absolutely no idea how they’re going to rebuild it. That’s exciting, and it’s right in front of us. We just have to endure one more waste of a season.