Charlotte Hornets 2025-26 season preview: Can LaMelo Ball lead his team to a 6-7 seed?

The 2025-26 NBA season is here! Over the next few weeks, we're examining the biggest questions, best- and worst-case scenarios, and win projections for all 30 franchises — from the still-rebuilding teams to the true title contenders.

CHARLOTTE HORNETS

2024-25 finish

• Record: 19-63 (14th in the East, missed playoffs)

• Offensive rating: 106.7 (29th)

• Defensive rating: 115.7 (24th)

Offseason moves

• Additions: Collin Sexton, Spencer Dinwiddie, Pat Connaughton, Mason Plumlee, Kon Knueppel, Liam McNeeley, Sion James, Ryan Kalkbrenner, Drew Peterson, Antonio Reeves

• Subtractions: Mark Williams, Jusuf Nurkić, Seth Curry, Taj Gibson, Vasilije Micić, Josh Okogie, Nick Smith Jr., Damion Baugh, DaQuan Jeffries, Wendell Moore Jr.

• Complete roster

The Big Question: What does the core look like?

The Hornets own the NBA’s longest active postseason drought, stretching nine seasons; they haven’t won a playoff seriessince 2002. To the extent that they’re relevant in the world of the NBA at the moment, it’s primarily due to LaMelo Ball’s connection to the 6-7 meme, which, as a 43-year-old father of two, is something I’m both intimately familiar with and utterly unable to firmly grasp.

The only franchise with a lower winning percentage over the last 15 seasons — the Pistons — crawled their way out of the muck and back to relevance last season in large part by building a sensible and cohesive team around their crown-jewel pick-and-roll ball-handler, Cade Cunningham. More importantly: Detroit got a career-high 70 games and 2,452 minutes out of its former top draft pick.

You can’t change fates if you’re not on the floor, and the Hornets’ chances of experiencing a similar revival likely rest with a similar resurgence in availability from Ball — an inarguably gifted, often maddening, rarely present weathervane who has played more than 51 games once in five pro seasons, owing largely to persistent ankleinjuries.

The Hornets went 16-31 in the 47 games in which Ball appeared last season, getting outscored by 3.9 points per 100 possessions. As bad as that was, though, it wasn’t nearly as bad as what happened when LaMelo wasn’t around: They went a staggering 3-32 in the 35 games he missed, and got outscored by a jarring 13.3 points-per-100 with him off the floor.

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They need Ball on the floor not only because he’s their primary ball-handler, most gifted playmaker and leading scorer, but also because they need to see whether what they’ve assembled around him is as sensible and cohesive as what the Pistons put around Cade last season. They never really had a chance to determine that last season, even when Ball was healthy; the Hornets lost more games to injury than any team outside of Philadelphia, according to Spotrac’s injury data, with Ball, Brandon Miller, Grant Williams, Tre Mann, since-traded centers Mark Williams and Nick Richards, and pretty much every other player even theoretically expected to provide meaningful minutes in Charlotte missing noteworthy chunks of time.

With Ball missing significant time due to ankle woes and enticing swingman Miller, the No. 2 pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, sidelined for the final three months of last season following wrist surgery, the Hornets’ most prized young players have shared the floor for just 828 minutes over 39 games combined over the last two seasons, according to PBP Stats. Hornets president of basketball operations Jeff Peterson said on media day that both Ball and Miller are fully operational and ready to go entering training camp; if they can stay that way into the season, hopefully Charlotte can begin assessing in earnest whether they’re able to serve as the engine of a turnaround.

The Hornets are already dealing with some dings — veterans Grant Williams and Josh Green are likely to miss training camp still rehabilitating from their respective surgeries — but if and when the injury bug bites again, this time around they’ll have some failsafe options, especially in the backcourt.

Collin Sexton, imported from the Jazz in a trade that helped signal Utah’s commitment to going full youth movement in the backcourt, is one of just 17 players in the NBA to average more than 17 points and four assists per game on .600 true shooting over the last three seasons; he should provide a legitimate injection of efficient shot-making and complementary ball-handling. The well-traveled Spencer Dinwiddie offers a steady set of hands off the bench who can also scale up into starter’s minutes if necessary. And Mann, limited to just 13 games last season by a herniated disc in his back, returns on a three-year, $24 million deal to see if the tantalizing production he posted in the first month of last season — 14.1 points and three assists in 24.5 minutes per game off the bench, shooting 40% from 3-point range and 90.5% from the foul line — was a sign of bigger things to come.

Squint a little and you kinda-sorta can see it. Ball at the controls, flanked by some combination of Miller, Sexton, lottery-pick marksman Kon Knueppel, ex-Celtics combo big man Williams, energetic 3-and-D wing Green and Miles Bridges — that’s a team that should be able to play the kind of uptempo, bombs away style that second-year coach Charles Lee sought to bring over from Boston.

Center could be a bit of adventure, with 12-year veteran Mason Plumlee returning for his second tour of duty in Charlotte to join young offensive rebounding machine Moussa Diabaté and second-round pick Ryan Kalkbrenner, whom Lee reportedly believes “can morph into a player akin to veteran center Brook Lopez,” in the running for starters’ minutes. But there might be enough screen-and-dive juice to provide the framework for a respectable 4-out, 1-in offense. (Early returns suggest that Sexton and Plumlee could start next to Ball, Miller and Bridges.)

Sprinkle in some second-unit offense from the likes of Mann, Dinwiddie and rookies Liam McNeeley and Sion James, and some continued defensive improvement from a group that leapt five spots in points allowed per possession in Lee’s first year on the bench, according to Cleaning the Glass, and the Hornets could look considerably more spirited on a nightly basis.

“At the end of the day, we are still in the building phase,” Peterson told reporters after the draft. “And to get to where you want to go, it starts with competitors.”

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The Hornets have the ammunition to add more competitors, owning all of their own future first-round picks while also having added a top-five-protected future first in the Mark Williams trade — reportedly the least favorable of Cleveland's, Utah's and Minnesota's first-rounders in 2029 — plus three future seconds in the deals to take on Sexton and Pat Connaughton. As Jared Dubin noted at Last Night in Basketball, since taking the reins in Charlotte, Peterson has turned a handful of not-in-the-future-plans players and three second-round picks into three first-rounders and 12 future seconds. (And counting, potentially, if Sexton, Green and Connaughton wind up on the move.)

Combine that with a pretty clean cap sheet — the only non-rookie-contract money on their books beyond the end of 2026-27 is Ball’s max — and the Hornets could be in position to make consequential additions as soon as next summer. First, though, Peterson and Co. need to figure out what they’re shopping for — which core components fit together, and which holes still need to be filled in.

Best-case scenario

Ball and Miller play more minutes together this season than they have over the last two, and they look great doing it, with Ball marrying his gaudy numbers with more temperate shot selection and ball control, and Miller showing the kind of all-around growth that validates some of those eyebrow-raising Paul George comps. Knueppel hits the ground running as a central-casting, high-floor complementary piece capable of spacing the floor and shouldering some shot-creation workload.

With LaMelo at the wheel and those bright young things running the wing, the Hornets become one of the league’s most fearsome transition outfits, sending them rocketing up the offensive efficiency rankings and sending play-by-play man Eric Collins into frankly uncomfortable fits of broadcasting ecstasy. Lee continues to coax the defense toward respectability; in a shattered and shaken-up Eastern Conference, that’s enough to get back into the play-in picture, and to give Hornets fans a reason to believe there’s an actual plan at work, and that it’s starting to work.

If everything falls apart

Ball can’t stay on the floor. None of the failsafe options can keep the offense out of the depths of the NBA basement without him. Miller and Knueppel strain under the weight of the additional offensive workload they have to shoulder in LaMelo’s absence. Despite Lee’s best efforts, neither the offense nor the defense can climb out of the bottom 10, leaving the Hornets once again mucking about in the lottery and once again wondering what, if anything, they can build with this collection of pieces.

2025-26 schedule

• Season opener: Oct. 22 vs. Brooklyn

• Complete schedule

Over/under win total: 27.5

Small sample size theater, but still: When Ball and Miller shared the floor last season, the Hornets outscored opponents by one point per possession — the efficiency differential of a 43- or 44-win team. Get anything close to reasonable health from them, and Charlotte should have a good chance of leaping a bar this close to the floor.

More season previews

East: Atlanta Hawks • Boston Celtics • Brooklyn Nets • Charlotte Hornets • Chicago Bulls • Cleveland Cavaliers • Detroit Pistons • Indiana Pacers • Miami Heat • Milwaukee Bucks • New York Knicks • Orlando Magic • Philadelphia 76ers • Toronto Raptors • Washington Wizards

West: Dallas Mavericks • Denver Nuggets • Golden State Warriors • Houston Rockets • Los Angeles Clippers • Los Angeles Lakers • Memphis Grizzlies • Minnesota Timberwolves • New Orleans Pelicans • Oklahoma City Thunder • Phoenix Suns • Portland Trail Blazers • Sacramento Kings • San Antonio Spurs • Utah Jazz