This season started off just like every other season, with Hornets fans holding on to a strong glimmer of hope. “If we can just stay healthy, this team should make the playoffs easily,” we obliviously repeated. Diehard Hornets fans–myself included–sat down to watch every single game and stayed engaged with the team each and every night. Furthermore, many of us have attended games whenever possible. Hornets fans were giving this team everything we had, yet the franchise has let us down once again. Is there a genuine reason that fans should care about the remainder of the season?
The Charlotte Hornets are currently 7-25 and sit at 13th place in the Eastern Conference. The team has dropped 16 out of the last 17 games. To make that statistic even worse, the Hornets dropped two games to the 3-win Wizards in one week. Slowly but surely, the air and energy has been taken out of this fanbase. Us diehard Charlotte sports fans, the diehard Hornets fans, we will never switch up, but it is genuinely difficult to remain engaged for the entirety of a season that looks like this.
Our injury troubles have without a doubt played a crucial role in our shortcomings. However, recent weeks have shown that injuries are not the entire problem In fact, we have seen that this Hornets team–even when close to fully healthy–falls far short of the rest of the NBA. In our most recent loss to the Wizards–widely regarded as the worst team in the league–our team was as close to fully healthy as it had been all season. And even then, we simply aren’t interesting to watch. Our offensive scheme is embarrassing, and we’re letting up boatloads of points night in and night out. We’ve got a lot of work to do.
Thus, I believe that the current trajectory of the Hornets actively discourages engagement from fans. What would drive an individual to pay for a ticket to see this team play? What would drive an individual to spend three hours watching this team on TV? Again, this is commonplace for the most loyal of fans, but it's simply not a realistic expectation anymore. We have actively monitored fan engagement on social media and the environment in Spectrum Center throughout the season, and one thing is clear: far less people care now than they did at the beginning of the season. Can you blame them? I’d argue no.
Images: Getty
I feel like fans essentially are the team in a way, you gotta support them. Still can't believe we lost to the wizards.