Western Conference Equivalent Franchise

[Walt Cronkite]

To begin, I'm excited for the next season of Hornets basketball. The previous offseason killed my team spirit and the season that followed didn't do it any favors. This offseason, I was of the opinion that Scoot Henderson was a better/more interesting prospective selection than Brandon Miller, but here we are, lets hope for the best.

Having written that, I do think I'll try to follow the Blazers more this season and it's probably the first time I've been interested in the Portland team since The Jailblazers or maybe the Greg Oden/Brandon Roy time period. Which made me wonder: Are the Blazers the Western Hornets? Our Sister Franchise?

I don't think they are, but I wanted to take it to the board. I know Fats has been a forever supporter of the Nuggets, so I've considered them. With the Sonics leaving Seattle, I've thought maybe the Supersonics were a better answer (another franchise taken from a rabid fanbase). I assume a lot of fans have an affinity for GSW because of Steph, but I don't think the franchise equivalency is really there, however we determine that. I think it's too historically pessimistic to equate the Clippers to the Charlotte franchise, but maybe in recent history they are the small market Clippers? Timberwolves?

Rich4114 wrote that this is the 4th most interesting place for Hornet discussion after reddit and discord and somewhere else, so I thought maybe this could carry us to the preseason.

[JDR720]

Maybe the Timberwolves.

Or the Kings. Yeah, probably the Kings. They've been bad for a long time until this past season where things are really looking up for them. Hopefully we can turn things around too.

[Walt Cronkite]

I do think Kings are a good suggestion, definitely considered them. Smaller market all things considered, franchise that has moved around, even had some similar peak years and potential referee shenanigans, long time suck.

[SWedd523]

Kings are the first team to pop into mind, not for any positive reasons though lol

[luciano-davidwesley]

Definitely Timberwolves or Kings

[Liver_Pooty]

Kangz

[HornetJail]

very clearly the Kings. The symbol of epic futility at gathering talent and maximizing it.

At least the Timberwolves always have a top 15 player in the league to waste.

[Walt Cronkite]

No one asked for this, but I crunched some numbers for Charlotte, Minnesota and Sacramento between the 04/05 and 22/23 seasons and we do appear to be the East Coast Kings. In that time period, all three made the playoffs three times. Charlotte had 611 total wins, 609 for Sacramento and only 573 for the Wolves. Excluding the Covid season, Charlotte had an average attendance of 15,968, Sacramento 15,820 and only 14,786 for Minnesota.

Getting into the weeds, Charlotte's expected wins were only 610 (-1), while the figure for Sacramento was 611 (+2) and Minnesota underperformed greatly and were expected to win 620 (+47) times. This could be explained by Minnesota having the better margin of victory (-2.8) as opposed to Sacramento's (-3.1) and Charlotte's worst (-3.2). Minnesota has had worse luck than Charlotte and Charlotte benefitted from a weaker strength of schedule.

Surprising no one who has been watching this time period, Charlotte has the slowest average pace and worst offense, but the best defensive rating of the three. Sacramento played the fastest and had the best offense, but with the worst defense to match. Charlotte and Sacramento had identical FT rates and we actually had the highest rate of 3s attempted, but with the worst TS% and eFG% (SAC best for both). Offensively Charlotte turned the ball over the least and presumably got back on defensive the most with the lowest OREB%. Defensively Charlotte forced the most turnovers and was the best franchise at cleaning up defensive rebounds (Wolves 2nd best).

So there you have it. Most similar to Sacramento results wise, stylistically more similar to the Wolves, who should've been much better than they were.

[Rich4114]

Yeah Portland has had a lot of success over the last decade even if they've had lottery seasons in between. But they've been in the second round multiple times I believe. It's certainly going to be the Kings or the Wolves. The Suns were us too before CP3 went there. We should acquire CP3 to expel the curse.

I know of the Twitter "lead" accounts, we seem to commiserate with the Wolves lead the most. Perhaps we have two siblings out west? Bring the Magic or Wizards along to balance it out? lol

[SWedd523]

Serious thumbs up to Walt for digging out that info.

I wonder how the Kings fans will feel about being Bobnets West