Charlotte is riddled with an interesting cast of characters that may or may not gel well together.
The Charlotte Hornets have been the center of either bad luck, poor coaching, or terrible roster management ever since they returned to the Queen City in 2005.
And based on what we have seen so far in the 2025-26 season, more of that poor luck is seeping into this current roster.
This isn’t a bad team. It is, however, a curious collection of players who have either been brought in to revitalize (or even vitalize) the culture of Hornets basketball, or players who have contributed to it being such a poor team for the past few seasons.
It’s clear what General Manager Jeff Peterson has wanted to do.
Rebuild the roster with basketball junkies and starting that rebuild with Kon Knueppel is the perfect way to go about it.
There’s a difference between the type of player that Knueppel is and someone of the LaMelo Ball variety.
Ball is perhaps one of the more talented players in the NBA, but there has always been something that has held him from being not just a star, but someone that can take the Hornets out of the basement of the NBA.
It’s hard not to look past the bravado and flair he carries off the court. He’s been in the spotlight since he was 14 years old, and that type of lifestyle can significantly jade a teenager.
So for those keeping score at home, you have a basketball guru who studies the game in every facet, and adopting parts to his game that has seemingly become a lost art.
“I think learning that physicality, how to get open, how to score over guys that are older, but also guys that can’t move as well anymore, I’m just learning by watching how they score and how they get off their shot. It’s just really important to be balanced; that’s how you make plays,” Knueppel told The Fayetteville Observer last season while at Duke University.
And then you have Ball, the naturally gifted player who was graced with a god-given ability to see the floor at a high level and watch plays happen in slow motion.
But not only that, Ball has gone on record to say a few years ago that he didn’t watch basketball, he mainly kept it to highlights.
Two faces of the franchise. Two different people.
Based on the direction this team wants to go in for the future, you have to wonder if Peterson is contemplating a trade of some sort.
There was a report that Ball was getting frustrated with the team and that he would welcome a trade but Ball denied those claims by saying it was “false info.”
But here’s the problem. Ball doesn’t seem to have much value on the market even if said info was true. One Western Conference executive told Tim MacMahon and Bobby Marks of ESPN that he wouldn’t want any of Ball, Ja Morant or Trae Young.
And that line of thinking seems to be popular around the league.
So if other teams feel that way about Ball, what does his own team think?