Jeff Peterson, Hornets Can Learn From Bobcats’ Chemistry Miscalculation

When you look back with hindsight, the 2014 Charlotte Hornets offseason feels like it was a collapse.

When you look back with perspective, though:

It feels more like an opportunity for this current iteration of the Hornets’ front office to learn from their own franchise’s history.

The freshly rebranded Hornets were coming off what was, at the time, one of the best seasons (since 2004-2005) in franchise history with a 43-39 finish.

Bobcats’ C Al Jefferson had finished the final two months of the regular season as Eastern Conference Player of the Month, and even in a first-round sweep by Miami, there was a sense inside the organization that something real had been built.

In the 2014-15 preseason that followed, Jefferson gave a quote to the late Rick Bonnell that still reads like a snapshot of that previous season’s tight-knit group:

“(This 2013-14 Bobcats team is the) first time I’d ever been in a situation where everybody put team-first,” Jefferson said. “When you have team-first, that’s when you can get up there with the San Antonios and the Miamis, guys who win championships.

“I was really surprised to see guys like MKG (Michael Kidd-Gilchrist), Kemba (Walker), and Gerald (Henderson) have this type of attitude at such young ages. I can say when I was a first- or second-year player, I didn’t have an attitude like that. I’m not ashamed to say that.”

Jefferson continued:

“That’s why those guys are so far ahead of where I was. It’s such a team-first attitude in that locker room it’s amazing.”

The Charlotte Observer’s Bonnell followed Jefferson’s long quote with one powerful sentence:

“It’s also perishable.”

2025-26 finds the Hornets in a similar position to that of the offseason following the Bobcats finale season— drawing attention and on the cusp of something tangible again.

Some of it comes from the belabored on point differential, some from the quiet national media curiosity that tends to follow any Charlotte team that begins to look competent. Once that happens, the conversation always seems to drift towards the same place:

The assumption is that one bold Hornets’ trade move could finally push a LaMelo Ball-led Hornets team over the hump.

For financial reasons, most hypothetical packages start and end with Hornets F Miles Bridges. Outside of Ball himself, his salary remains one of the few contracts that can be a centerpiece worthy of facilitating a blockbuster deal.

Bridges, for all his fluctuations as a player, is the longest-tenured teammate and off-court best friend of Ball. He is one of the few players in the locker room who has lived through the franchise’s losing cycles and gradual recalibration from the inside. That kind of continuity is extremely hard to find in a league built on constant churn.

So when reports surface that Hornets General Manager Jeff Peterson’s asking price for Bridges is multiple first-round picks, the reaction nationally is predictably inaccurate: too high an ask, and too risky, being the reaction for most.

If you choose to take Jefferson’s aforementioned words seriously, though, the first-round pick asking price starts to look less like Hornets bravado and more like a proper valuation and understanding of what Bridges provides off the court, too.

A veteran center in Jefferson who had already played in Boston, Utah, and Minnesota arrived in Charlotte and said the 2013-14 group was the first truly team-first environment he had ever experienced. That is not a sentiment you can dismiss lightly— even 12 years later.

Charlotte could “win” a trade on paper in a move including Bridges. They could improve optics, upgrade a position, and collect assets.

All it takes, though, is for the front office in Charlotte to make one slight personality miscalculation in a trade for Bridges, and that national sentiment of an “on-paper trade win” disappears overnight.

The Hornets learned this in that same summer of 2014.

Charlotte chose not to counter the Miami Heat’s offer for PF Josh McRoberts, an offensive connector whose value rarely appeared in box scores but was widely felt by coach Steve Clifford and the players. Instead, the team reshuffled its core in pursuit of incremental talent upgrades in other positions.

What followed was not immediate failure, but rather a slow erosion.

Team chemistry was exchanged for unmet potential with Lance Stephenson. Continuity traded for experimentation in rookie PF Noah Vonleh rather than prioritizing a McRoberts return. The room that Jefferson described did not vanish overnight, but it never fully returned, either. That is the quiet lesson.

What Charlotte has now, even in something as modest as a short winning stretch, is not accidental. It is the product of years of that same shared frustration and gradual buy-in from players who have grown tired of losing.

For small-market franchises, trusting the growth of franchise pieces like Bridges is often the only strategy that turns something fragile into a team with potential that’s also sustainable long-term.

Charlotte’s stance on their Bridges’ asking price suggests the front office understands this well— patience that’s long overdue, but patience that suggests it’s finally learned from past front office iterations’ mistakes.

“Chemistry is rarely by accident,” Clifford said in the summer of ‘14. “On a roster of 14 guys, you can’t have three or four who want more, who are unhappy. They’re talking to people, family or friends, who tell them, ‘You need more, you need more.’

“I don’t think that’s anybody’s fault. It’s just human nature.”

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