LaMelo Ball of the Charlotte Hornets attends a 2025 NBA Summer League game between the Hornets and the Philadelphia 76ers at the Thomas & Mack Center on July 12, 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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Even though the regular season is creeping closer by the hour and the anticipation of it all is wafting through the city, Charles Lee insists not much has changed.
Preparations for the Charlotte Hornets leading into Wednesday’s opener against the Brooklyn Nets at Spectrum Center still register at the same level as it did throughout the preseason. Things haven’t been cranked up a notch.
At least not yet, anyway.
“Yeah, I would say it’s a lot of the same type of intensity,” Lee, the Hornets’ coach, said Monday. “I think I’ve talked a lot about the competitiveness at our practices. I think that we have such great depth. There’s three starters that are probably pretty clear in everybody’s minds and then the other two spots. I think that you have to earn it, and it’s going to be based upon how you perform, how you earn it at practice and how you earn trust with the coaching staff and your teammates.
“And then also maybe some match-up-type decisions to make. So, I think that the guys have been focused and locked in from practice to practice, game-to-game. And so the intensity remains the same. Excitement is there.”
Particularly when the Hornets can peek on the floor and see the likes of LaMelo Ball, Brandon Miller and Tre Mann doing their thing. After an offseason of retooling the roster, the Hornets are ready to prove just how good they can be in Lee’s second season.
“With everybody being back and us playing locked in, playing like I know we can,” Miles Bridges said, “I feel like we can compete with any team in the league. Not to put expectations on us, but I feel like we can compete with anybody.”
Here are three Hornets’ predictions for the 2025-26 campaign.
A rookie reigns supreme inside
When the Hornets were reconstructing their roster in the offseason and trying to retool the center position after dealing Mark Williams to the Phoenix Suns on draft night, they plucked Ryan Kalkbrenner off the board in the second round.
Although it was obvious then what the organization thought of the big man’s skillset, they needed to add someone else to give them more options at the position, another body to team with Moussa Diabate and his uber-energetic nature. That led to the signing and return of Mason Plumlee, bringing back the veteran for a second for of duty.
Kon Knueppel #7 dribbles with Ryan Kalkbrenner #11 of the Charlotte Hornets as Jalen Brunson #11 of the New York Knicks defends during the first half at Madison Square Garden on October 17, 2025 in New York City. Sarah Stier Getty Images
Diabate is relentless and has an uncanny knack for the ball, endearing himself to his teammates with his penchant for keeping the ball alive or snatching offense rebounds off the glass. But starting him against bigger centers isn’t a recipe for long-term success inside if it constantly leaves the Hornets undersized, which is where Plumlee comes in.
It appeared initially as if this might wind up being a similar situation to what the Hornets did with Williams during his rookie season in 2022, when they brought him along slowly by starting Plumlee for those first few months before trading Plumlee to the LA Clippers and giving the reins to Williams. But Kalkbrenner’s summer league performance paired with his preseason outings and holding his own in team practices behind closed doors likely changed all that. And quickly.
Which is why Kalkbrenner is going to emerge as the one who starts the most games at the position for the Hornets this season. And his full-time insertion with the group that includes Ball, Miller and Miles Bridges won’t take long.
The prediction here is if Kalkbrenner isn’t the Hornets’ starter when the opening tip is tossed against Brooklyn — or even, say, by Halloween — then go ahead and mark it down now.
Kalkbrenner will be the main guy at center by the time you’re on your second heaping plate of leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner. The future for the 23-year old is now.
LaMelo Ball’s games played
Seventy-five.
That’s the number of games LaMelo Ball logged in 2021-2022 during his second season. He hasn’t sniffed that amount of outings since.
Injuries, as those who’ve followed along even sparsely even know, over the past five seasons have derailed Ball’s train, sidelining him often for weeks at a time just as he’d get going and remind everyone just how talented he is.
Essentially, he’s a walking triple-double, easily wowing the audience with the kind of acrobatic pass he hurled to Miller during the preseason in Greensboro. When he’s healthy and the Hornets are whole, which has been a rarity in itself for the past half decade, they’re a tough out and can hang with most teams.
LaMelo Ball #1 of the Charlotte Hornets watches his shot during the first half of a basketball game against the New York Knicks at Spectrum Center on March 20, 2025 in Charlotte, North Carolina. David Jensen Getty Images
That’s why it’s so important for him to be available.
And this is the year that is going to happen.
Ball will play in at least 70 games in 2025-26, reversing the trend seen him in street clothes more often than anyone ever anticipated when he was taken third overall in 2020. He’s in the second season of a five-year max contract worth more than $200 million, and given the guard depth the front office added behind him in the offseason, there shouldn’t be a whole lot of wear and tear, presumably allowing him to stay on the court and off the injury report.
If he’s going to have a sustained career in Charlotte, he first has to prove he can just stay healthy. That’s where it all begins and ends with Ball, and in turn, the Hornets as a whole.
A postseason party
Someone who knows the NBA landscape well, and hip to many of the league’s inner workings for more than two decades after authoring a Hall of Fame career, surmised the national perspective regarding the franchise based in Charlotte.
“There’s 29 teams,” he said, “and the Hornets.”
Having never advanced past the second round of the playoffs and mired in the NBA’s longest postseason drought (nine seasons), that’s a small snippet of how the Hornets are viewed across the continental United States and beyond. Respect just isn’t there no matter what the Hornets do, and they are an afterthought for more than a few people.
Only one thing, mind you, will ever change that.
As longtime Los Angeles/Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis used to say, “Just win, baby.”
Piling up victories hasn’t exactly been Charlotte’s mo, particularly over the last five years when three coaches at the helm compiled a combined 143-275 mark. A home playoff game probably feels as real as a unicorn or mermaid to some of the team’s younger patrons.
Well, here’s something that won’t turn out to be a figment of your imagination: This is the year the curse of ‘Purple shirt guy’ is broken.
Collin Sexton #8 of the Charlotte Hornets dribbles during the first half against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden on October 17, 2025 in New York City. Sarah Stier Getty Images
No need to bust out the magnifying glass. You read that correctly and it’s not a typographical error. It’s happening. Book it.
The Hornets are making the playoffs for the first time since 2016. As in the actual eight-team field in the Eastern Conference, not merely the opening round of the play-in tournament like they did in 2021 and 2022.
Oh, they’ll still have to advance out of the play-in tournament because only the top six seeds receive automatic berths into the main field. But mark this one down. Playoff basketball is coming to Charlotte in the spring.
Let’s face it: Injuries have potentially evened things out a bit in the conference, with Boston (Jayson Tatum) and Indiana (Tyrese Haliburton) missing their superstars due to lengthy rehab stints. Even Southeast Division foe Miami will be without Tyler Herro at the start of the season.
If healthy — which we know is a big ask for a franchise that has not had much luck in that department in recent memory — there’s no reason the Hornets can’t contend for the eighth spot. Spencer Dinwiddie, although he’s since been released, got laughed at by some on social media when he said, “I don’t see us as having subpar or bottom-third type talent in the league.”
He’s right, though. And it’s why the voodoo postseason basketball hex is ending in six months.
Roderick Boone
The Charlotte Observer
Roderick Boone joined the Observer in September 2021 to cover the Charlotte Hornets and NBA. In his more than two decades of writing about the world of sports, he’s chronicled everything from high school rodeo to a major league baseball no-hitter to the Super Bowl to the Finals. The Long Island native has deep North Carolina roots and enjoys watching “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” endlessly.
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