A year and a half ago, in the spring of 2025, the Charlotte Hornets watched the play-in games to the NBA playoffs from the comfort of their own living room easy chairs, finishing with one of the worst records in the NBA for the third season in a row. The Hornets’ front office, led by general manager Jeff Peterson, had nothing to look forward to in late April but assembling a roster for the next season: the NBA draft, the trade window opening, and free agency.
The Hornets hardly seemed a team that would challenge for the playoffs in the following season after they drafted and rostered four rookies in the 2025 draft, taken at picks number 4, 29, 33 and 34. Nor did the Hornets appear to be trying to compete when they signed Mason Plumlee out of free agency to a minimum contract, to round out the center position along side rookie second round pick, Ryan Kalkbrenner, taken with pick 34, and young minimum contract, Moussa Diabaté, who was picked up off the LA Clippers’ trash heap the prior year. On the bright side, they did finally secure a quality backup point guard by trading for Collin Sexton, filling a long time hole in the roster.
The Hornets’ outlook as the season approached was further darkened by numerous players’ recovering from surgery: LaMelo Ball went under the knife for twin operations on right ankle and right wrist to ‘clean up’ those joints, Tre Mann required back surgery to improve a herniated disk, Josh Green, left shoulder surgery to improve instability, and Grant Williams, major knee surgery to repair a blowout with multiple torn ligaments and a torn meniscus.
The Hornets shambled to one of the worst starts in the NBA: the day before Thanksgiving, the 18th game of the season, the New York Knicks stomped the Hornets 129-101, capping a seven game losing streak that dropped them to the bottom of the league. Their outlook was dim, but from there they scratched, clawed, and then surged to their best season in nine years.
Read on to relive their grim start, their stabilization as a .500 team after Thanksgiving, and their elevation to NBA darlings when the Dream Five™ (rest in peace) cranked up the Buzz Saw™, shredding their opponents and improbably bolting towards a playoff spot, before ultimately faltering in the play-in games once again.
The Hornets got an early taste of offseason success when sharp shooting rookie wing, Kon Knuepple, pick number four in the draft, led the Hornets to the Summer League championship. They ran rampant through summer school, undefeated, with notable contributions from fellow rookie draftees Connecticut freshman wing Liam McNeely (pick 29), Duke fifth year senior combo guard Sion James (pick 33), and Creighton fifth year senior Ryan Kalkbrenner (pick 34). Great vibes washed over the Hornets’ fans who paid attention, as Knuepple introduced himself to the professional world with a wildly talented floor game, a good natured lunchpail demeanor, a highly analytical basketball mind, and, sometimes, a slightly mischievous grin high-lighting his blond farm-boy looks.
Former All Star, Hornets’ max contract, LaMelo Ball returned from surgery to begin the season and he started hot, but soon had to take a seat on the bench when his surgically cleaned ankle flared up on him, termed “ankle impingement” on the injury report. Tre Mann was also in the rotation to begin the season, but was markedly ineffective, leaving fans pining for The Mann he was before his back injury.
Disaster struck in the second game of the year when high scoring and high flying third year wing Brandon Miller partially dislocated his shoulder, sending the Hornets into a tailspin with very serious injury problems. Those problems ranged from serious to catastrophic over the next month. The Hornets at times started three rookies (James, Kalkbrenner, and Knuepple) or two rookies and a G-Leaguer (Kalkbrenner, Knuepple, and point guard KJ Simpson) with G-league center, PJ Hall, also getting major run and starting some games as well. On the plus side, Knuepple turned heads across the league with deadly outside shooting and unflappable play on both ends of the court, and second round rookies James and Kalkbrenner both played surprisingly solid and mistake free basketball as regulars in the rotation, with Kalkbrenner the starting center to begin the season.
Miller returned to the court the week before Thanksgiving, on November 22cnd, with a bulky wrap around his left shoulder and upper arm, bringing the Hornets back to decent health. With Miller working into game shape, in and out of the lineup, the Hornets continued to struggle until their record dropped to 4-14 when the Knicks dominated them on Nov. 26th. But, after Thanksgiving, the Hornets celebrated their return to mostly good health by beating the Bulls and the Raptors the next two games, marking a turning point in the season.
In the following two months, the Hornets gradually built up their team health and chemistry while playing .500 basketball. They took care of business by usually beating the weaker teams in the league, and they began playing the better teams more closely, with some notable wins sprinkled in, like their December 14th overtime win playing on the road versus the Cleveland Cavaliers, when Knuepple erupted for 29 points, Miller for 25, and the rookie James filled in for Ball at point guard, starting out of position, since Collin Sexton also missed that game. The recently recovered Josh Green played his second game after his shoulder surgery, and he contributed two three-pointers to help the effort.
In late December, Kalkbrenner sprained his elbow and missed 10 games, allowing Diabaté to move up to the starter’s role in a win against the Washington Wizards, a role which he never relinquished. That game began an incredible run by the starting five of Diabaté, Ball, Miller, Knuepple and Bridges, which earned them the nicknames the Dream Five and the Buzz Saw. They went on to be one of the very best five man lineups in the entire league, with each player contributing valuable team play that meshed perfectly into a basketball steam-roller of a lineup. A January 5th blow-out win on the road versus a mostly healthy Oklahoma City team exemplified the fast paced, high scoring and defensively stingy team that the Dream Five played at their best. For the first month they played together, the Dream Five’s court time was limited by Ball’s ankle injury management and minor injuries to Knuepple, Bridges and Miller that cost them one game each, while Diabaté missed three.
Grant Williams returned on January 10th from his catastrophic knee injury in a game against the Utah Jazz: two teams with similar records headed in completely different directions. Each entered the game with only 13 wins on the season and 24 or 25 losses. Fully healthy for the first time all year, the Hornets utterly wiped the floor with the Jazz, 150-95. As Grant worked his way back into game shape, the Hornets alternated wins and losses for the next six games as they played one good team after another. Ball came off the bench two times in losses during this stretch, as the team limited his playing time during back to back games, to go easy on his bad ankle. They beat the Lakers, the Nuggets and the Magic, while losing to the Clippers, the Warriors and the Cavaliers.
In that January 22cnd blowout win over the Magic, 124-97, the Hornets marked a second turning point of the season. They had all their best players healthy and in game shape, and team chemistry coalesced like raindrops in a cloud and they stormed the league, commencing one of the best runs by the team in at least a decade. Look for Part Two of Dreaming of a Buzz Saw to relive that glorious time.
