The NBA Playoffs are underway, and has been the case for over 10 years, the Charlotte Hornets aren’t a part of it. We’ve all gotten used to the season ending in mid-April, but this time, it’s different, even if the ending is somewhat familiar. The Hornets have been in the play-in twice since their last playoff appearance, and both of those ended with the same noncompetitive blowout loss that this season ended with. Both of those seasons were headed by James Borrego, who was (probably undeservedly) relieved of his duties after the second loss. Michael Jordan, Mitch Kupchak, and the rest of the front office fully botched the hiring of replacement, and everything about the team fell apart.

That final Borrego-led team had a late season surge to make the play-in, but it was nothing like the sustained success we saw in the 2025-26 iteration. And that version had more veteran players playing more essential roles in the rotation. And we can be certain that the current ownership and front office is going to handle the next steps of the build better than their predecessors.

It’s easy to be frustrated by the ending. The Hornets folded in some important regular season games down the stretch then fully imploded in the second round of the play-in against the Magic. That shouldn’t take away from what the group accomplished in the months preceding that, especially relative to what the expectations were coming into the season. The team’s win total over-under was 27.5, and their title odds were tied for the longest with the Nets, Jazz, and Wizards. This team was expected by many to be one of the worst teams in the league once again. A loss in the first game of 2026 sent the Hornets to an 11-23 record, right in the company of the aforementioned teams. A few days later, the Hornets blew out a mostly healthy Thunder team in Oklahoma City, and they were off and running from there.

Including that loss, the Hornets played 48 games in the 2026 calendar year. They had the best net rating in the entire NBA, and that included plenty of wins against some elite teams despite what Stan Van Gundy said in a weirdly slanted broadcast during the Hornets/Magic play-in game. The Hornets boasted the best offense and the fourth best defense in a sampling of nearly 60% of the season. Their 33-15 record in those games would translate to a 56 win season if it were sustained for a full 82. And that’s with the Hornets performing poorly in close games, which is something that could easily flip purely out of luck.

All of that is with a team that is exceedingly young and under team control for the foreseeable future. Coby White is the only noteworthy free agent, and it seems almost a certainty that he’ll be back for next season. The big three of LaMelo Ball, Brandon Miller, and Kon Knueppel are all very green despite all the success they led the team to, and they’ll only be better in the years to come. Sion James and Ryan Kalkbrenner are going to get better, and we still don’t even fully know what we have in Liam McNeeley. And Tidjane Salaun is a bit of a wildcard in his own right. There is all sort of talent in this group, and we know the organization is going to maximize it. Just look at what kind of player Moussa Diabate has become.

Jeff Peterson has a big cache of assets to improve this group as well. The Hornets have the 14th pick and the will have one of the 16th, 17th, or 18th pick based on a tiebreaker drawing. I don’t know if the team will be interested in adding two more rookies with those picks, but they are very appealing assets as part of a potential trade. The team also owns a handful of other teams’ picks in the coming years. While Peterson has been adamant about building this team the right way and with patience, it seems like a prime spot for him to convert some of those assets into a player that can move the needle.

The Hornets should be proud of what they accomplished this season. They announced themselves as a team to be taken seriously after years of irrelevance. All of the key pieces of the resurgence will be back next year unless the organization pursues an upgrade. This season should prove to be a stepping stone into contention for Charlotte.