Robot Rock wrote:Rice was definitely fascinating and a helluva player here. The main reason the Hornets were competitive into the early 2000s was winning the lottery with LJ and Zo, then trading them for new stars who did well (Mason, Rice), then trading those players for a new star (Jones), then trading that star for a new star (Mashburn) and winning the lottery with Baron Davis. All of the trading was necessitated, of course, by Shinn's being cheap and by LJ's back injury.
But we subsisted, even thrived, for about a decade mostly off two ping pong balls going our way.
We were so spoiled by Bob Bass and didn’t even realize it. He made lemonade out of his lemons. Shinn was such a bad owner, especially for a city like Charlotte. He drafted pretty well and gets crap for the Kobe thing but he really found ways to maximize his assets. Hornets were competitive for the majority of a decade because of him