Yes, even the Hornets

Good morning. Every franchise can rise quickly. Every franchise. But there's a psychic albatross that needs to be cut loose. Let's basketball.

Back in June amid a competitive NBA Finals series with one stunning participant, and featuring two teams that had very recently been in the wilderness, I wrote that glory is within reach for every NBA franchise and provided a long justification by pointing out just how many current contenders were awful earlier this decade. Some of the teams rose organically on the strength of high-impact draft picks. Some made canny trades. But various salary cap reforms and the wide talent base of the modern league have simply made it harder to keep great teams together and thus easier to build good teams quickly. This paradigm may grow in power as the Apron Era further establishes itself.

If there is one example of a truly hopeless franchise in the NBA, though, it is the Charlotte Hornets. Since its conjuring as the Bobcats expansion club in 2004 after the original, moderately successful Charlotte Hornets The Elder were whisked away to New Orleans, the New Hornets have been dreadful: zero playoff series won over 21 seasons, four winning seasons in that span, three playoff berths, three playoff game wins, one 45-win season, zero 50-win seasons, eight 50-loss seasons, three seasons with less than 20 wins.

The Wizards are the only other franchise without a 50-win season since 2004-05. That franchise has been in rough shape for about 45 years now. Washington made back-to-back Finals in 1978 and 1979, winning the franchise's only title that first year, and haven't won multiple playoff series or won 50 games in any season since. It's a long, long record of mediocrity.

And yet! Over those 46 mostly sad seasons, the Wizards née Bullets have made the playoffs 37% of the time and have won a playoff series in 11% of their seasons.

The born-again Hornets have made the playoffs 14% of the time and have won a playoff series in 0% of their seasons. When you make the last 46 years of Washington Wizards basketball look like the freaking Lakers, you are in bad, bad shape.

And yet ... glory is within reach.