An offseason youth movement and a slew of injuries and surgeries led the Hornets to skid into the cellar early last season, then they played .500 basketball after Thanksgiving through mid-late January 2026. With all their best players healthy and in game shape for the first time in ages, the Hornets began to win, finding a tight and productive chemistry under coach Charles Lee. They ran up the score with prolific three-point shooting and offensive rebounding. They clamped down on defense on team after team as they marched to a nine game win streak, including wins over playoff contenders Orlando, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Houston and Atlanta.
Holding five out of nine opponents to fewer than 100 points during that win streak, the superlatives and nicknames flowed. Suddenly the Hornets were a team to fear, and to watch. Brandon Miller, in particular, lit up the scoreboard and upped his defensive intensity en route to being named Eastern Conference Player of the Week on February 2, 2026.
The Hornets kicked off the win streak by blowing out the Magic in Orlando, 124-97, in a well rounded team effort led by Miller’s 20 points and Sexton’s 19. They narrowly avoided a let-down loss to the Washington Wizards in Charlotte, preventing the cutting disappointment Hornets’ fans have grown far too accustomed to in recent years. Next up, they crushed the Philadelphia 76ers 130-93, with Miller torching the nets in a 30 point, eight assist explosion. Knuepple filled out the box score, outplaying his ‘Sixers rookie counterpart VJ Edgecomb. Other notable highlights of the streak included a narrow win over the Dallas Mavericks when Knuepple went toe to toe with his college room-mate, the much hyped Cooper Flagg, who racked up an efficient 49 point, 10 rebound stat line, bolstering his Rookie of the Year chances, while Knuepple’s 34 point, four rebound, three assist effort was also spectacular, taking only 16 shots from the floor and going eight for 12 from the three-point line.
The San Antonio Spurs, an excellent 32-16 at the time, visited Charlotte on New Year’s Eve, and the Spurs, like the Hornets, were fully healthy. Brandon Miller led all scorers with 26 points and grabbed 8 rebounds, but the key to the Hornets’ victory was Moussa “Moose” Diabaté’s inspired defense on MVP contender Victor Wembanyama. Diabaté out-worked and out-quicked Wemby all night and finished with an stat-stuffing and efficient double-double with 12 points, 10 rebounds, 6 assists and 2 blocks to win the battle of French centers that night. Diabaté also played a big role in the Hornets’ win over the Houston Rockets a few days later, clamping down on their young All Star center, Alperen Şengün, and The Moose ran rampant again the following game when the Hornets out-gunned the Atlanta Hawks. In that one, Diabaté wiped the boards with 15 rebounds, five of them offensive, and scored an efficient 11 points, while Bridges took a turn in the spotlight with 26 points on good shooting inside the arc, bullying the Atlanta forwards, Risacher and Johnson.
During the win streak, just before the trade deadline, the Hornets sent Collin Sexton and draft capital to the Chicago Bulls in exchange for Coby White on February 4th. The former Tar Heel star came to the Hornets with a lingering left calf injury and missed his first seven games.
The Detroit Pistons broke the streak in a dramatic showdown on February 9th, one of the best teams in the league with a 38-13 record and a gritty, defense-first style of play reminiscent of the championship Bad Boy Pistons of old. The Hornets didn’t score for the first three minutes of game time, but they led by four to end the first quarter after James hit a half court three-pointer. In the second quarter, Cade Cunningham lit up the scoreboard with 15 points on just seven shots from the floor, while Ball, took ten shots in the quarter to score eight points. The Pistons led by four at the half.
In the third quarter the Pistons increased their lead to eight on the strength of Jalen Duren’s inside scoring, but the game came to a chaotic halt when halfway through the quarter Diabaté fouled Duren on a shot attempt. They both bowed up, butting heads like two bighorn rams. Duren put his hand on Diabaté’s face and shoved him away, touching off a sprawling brawl that led to the ejection and suspension of Diabaté, Duren, Bridges, who joined Diabaté swinging on Duren, and of Isaiah Stewart, after he bolted from the bench to attack Bridges, who appeared to relish the chance to exchange blows with “Beef Stew”, the burly enforcer for the Pistons.
Down two starters, the Hornets fell behind by 12 before a pair of Knuepple triples cut the Piston’s lead to six with five minutes to go. The Hornets came within four points twice in the last couple of minutes, but couldn’t crest the hump, ultimately losing by six.
The fight with the Pistons stands out as a huge missed opportunity. The Hornets came into that game reveling in the performance of the Dream Five, playing at an elite level and beating some of the best teams in the league. If Bridges had kept his cool and remained in the game while Duren and Diabaté were ejected, the Hornets had a real chance of winning. But, what really hurt the Hornets was the following four game suspension of both Bridges and Diabaté. If Bridges had behaved like a calming veteran influence and stepped in by hugging Diabaté and talking him down, instead of throwing haymakers at Duren, Bridges wouldn’t have been suspended and Diabaté probably wouldn’t have gotten suspended, or maybe just missed one game.
With those two out, the Hornets lost two close games, to Cleveland and Houston. Hypothetically, if the Hornets won two out of three of those losses, they would have finished 46-36 with the number five seed in the East, edging Toronto and Atlanta on tiebreakers. That’s how close the Hornets were to being in a four seed vs five seed playoff series with Cleveland instead of falling to the ninth seed and having to win two play-in games to advance to the playoffs.
In the last quarter of the season, the Hornets continued to play well, reeling off win streaks of six, five and four games. They beat every team that was not a playoff contender, and they beat the better teams of the league more often than not, while playing a tough slate to finish the season. After beating the playoff bound Suns and T-Wolves, they still had hopes for clinching a top eight seed as the season drew to a close, but, they faltered against two of the best teams in the league, losing to the Celtics and the Pistons, to limp into the ninth seed and a date in Charlotte with the Miami Heat for the first play-in game.
To end the regular season, they blew out the New York Knicks’ subs, as the Knicks rested their better players. The only drama was whether Knuepple would hold onto the season’s NBA crown for most three-point shots made, as Ball staged a desperate attempt to pass him, hoisting 16 three-pointers. Ball made five of them, while Knuepple made three out of ten to narrowly hang onto the crown, with 273 three-pointers made versus Ball’s 272, a remarkable achievement for the Hornets’ prize rookie. Knuepple not only made the most threes in the league, but he did it with superb efficiency, hitting 42.5% of his long range shots while taking eight per game. Ball took almost 100 more three-pointers than Knuepple over the course of the season.
Facing perpetual Hornets’ playoff road-block, Miami, in the play-in game, Charlotte narrowly won in over-time on the strength of Ball’s 30 point and 10 assist effort, but his game will be remembered just as much for his hooking Bam Adebayo’s foot while Adebayo was off balance, causing a hard fall that took Adebayo out of the game with a lower back injury. Though no foul was called at the time, the league reassessed and upgraded the play to a flagrant foul two and Ball was fined $35,000 for the incident, plus another $25,000 for using profanity in a post-game interview.
In their second play-in game, the Orlando Magic physically dominated the Hornets en route to a 121-90 shellacking, and with that, the heady run of elite play by the Dream Five came to a sad and final conclusion. Hornets general manager Jeff Peterson subsequently broke up the lineup when he traded away Ball and Bridges in July of 2026, removing the largest remaining traces of the Michael Jordan/Mitch Kupchak era.
Hornets fans will remember the 2025-26 season fondly for the team’s run of excellence in the second half of the season, featuring the Dream Five, a healthy LaMelo Ball, and the emergence of young leaders like Knuepple, Diabaté, Miller, and instant fan favorite, Coby White, a native North Carolinian and long time basketball star in the state, who came back from his calf injury with torrid scoring off the bench.
Knuepple earned four straight Eastern Conference Rookie of the Month awards from November through February, and ran neck and neck with Cooper Flagg for Rookie of the Year throughout the year before narrowly losing that race, when he suffered through a lower back injury in the last three weeks of the season and misfired en route to his only extended shooting slump of his rookie campaign.
Longtime Hornets, Ball and Bridges will be missed, but some of their actions highlighted in this story help explain why the Hornets’ front office decided to move on. White and newcomer Naz Reid will step into the starting lineup in their places, and together with Knuepple, Miller and Diabaté they will seek to forge a new pathway to success, Dreaming of a Buzz Saw.
