Let's say you grew up with a dog named Hugo. He was your first pet. You bought him a teal and purple collar. You forgave him when he peed in the house as a puppy. You loved him more when he learned how to fetch. He lived a full life. When the end came, it wasn't a surprise. Hugo had a good life. There would only be one Hugo.
But not long after, your parents came home with another dog named Rufus. This dog will be as good, if not better than Hugo, they said. But you're a little bit older now. You know better.
Rufus tried to be a good dog. He just didn't know how. When Rufus peed in the house, you were a little less forgiving. When Rufus barked, you ignored it. Rufus was alright. But he wasn't Hugo.
I miss Hugo, you told your parents. We must never speak of Hugo, was their reply.
Midway through Rufus' life, your parents realize they've made a mistake. So one day, they crack open the old photo album and show you pictures of Hugo running, jumping and smiling. As they pull a teal and purple collar out of the closet, they say, "Let's rename the dog Hugo. Wouldn't you like him more if he were named Hugo?"
This should not work. You know the original Hugo is gone forever, and merely dressing up Rufus with a familiar name and an old collar can't bring him back. But there's something about the colors. There's something about the name. You can't help feeling better about it.
Sam Sharpe-USA TODAY Sports
This is the best way I can explain what is happening in Charlotte, where the NBA team is in the process of changing names. Hugo the Hornet will quite literally replace Rufus the Bobcat next year. On Saturday night, the team hyped up a clumsily-named "brand identity reveal," set to happen at halftime of its game against the Utah Jazz.
This was not a normal Bobcats game, where scalpers realize it's a buyer's market for tickets and the unspoken rule is that you can easily move down at least a few rows from the seat you bought. Fans in the lower bowl did the wave, which is remarkable, because often there are not enough fans to make it possible. The in-house DJ played nothing but 90's hip-hop. There was a toddler in toddler-sized Muggsy Bogues warmups. Rufus Lynx, the doomed mascot, dressed up like Grandmama.
On this night, there was a sea of teal and purple in the stands. There had been pockets of it here and there before, but for years, the team had ignored it. Now, they embraced it. A steady stream of people in Hornets throwback gear flooded the jumbotron, whose name had changed from Bobcats TV to Buzz City TV. Staffers in the arena wore the old Hornets colors. During a timeout, a video of Bogues played on the scoreboard. The place burst into cheers.
And then, halftime. The lights lowered. The arena was bathed with soft purple light. Pinpricks of teal dotted the stands, coming from fans holding glowsticks. After a short video and an interlude of piped-in buzzing, Michael Jordan himself walked to center court.
"You guys asked," he said, "and we delivered."
Shortly after, original Hornets Kelly Tripucka, Rex Chapman, Muggsy Bogues and Dell Curry joined him.
"Charlotte!" Curry yelled into the microphone. "We're baaaaaaaack."
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The history of NBA basketball in Charlotte can be summed up thusly: The Hornets started out doing everything right. The Bobcats? The opposite.
The Hornets debuted in 1988 by winning just 20 games. The city gave them a ticker tape parade through uptown Charlotte as if they had just won the NBA title. They played in an already-obsolete 24,000 seat coliseum that was short on skyboxes but sold out nearly every game for seasons, consistently leading the NBA in attendance. They signed 2/5ths of the Space Jam roster in Bogues and Larry Johnson. The Hornets Starter Jacket became a 90's phenomenon. The whole city fell in love. Little Charlotte was suddenly a big deal.
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More Bobcats/Hornets coverage
Then the ugly business of funding a new arena came along. At the same time, the spunky little owner, George Shinn, found himself facing a lawsuit for sexual assault in 1999. Shinn beat the rap, but the whole episode upset Charlotte's still-palpable sense of Southern decorum. The fans stopped going and nobody cared all that much when the Hornets left for New Orleans in 2002.
The NBA replaced the Hornets in a ham-handed way, rushing a new team to a town that had lost all interest in the old one. First, voters said no to a new arena; the city built one anyway. Then BET founder Bob Johnson was awarded the new franchise and named it the Bobcats, because of COURSE Bob Johnson thought it had a nice ring to it. The team picked up Tar Heels like Raymond Felton and the perpetually-injured Sean May to try and appeal to the ACC crowd, but with a supporting cast made up of guys like Primoz Brezec and Matt Carroll, the Bobcats never won more than 35 games in their first five seasons.
In their sixth, the Bobcats won 44 and made the playoffs on the backs of guys like Gerald Wallace and Stephen Jackson. The team was swept by the Magic, and the loudest moment was a pre-game intro that showed some of the old Hornets playoff runs.
The fans stayed away. Johnson, incensed, said Charlotte's business community was trying to torpedo him. Larry Brown came and went. Sam Vincent and Mike Dunlap were one-and-done coaches. Michael Jordan bought the team from Johnson in 2010 and promised to be as ferocious in the front office as he'd been on the court, but instead brought the same old groans that he'd inspired in Washington. Adam Morrison became his new Kwame Brown, which led to even more groaning when Brown himself came to play for the Bobcats in 2010.
And so it went until last year, when the new owner of the New Orleans Hornets announced that he planned to ditch the Hornets name for something more New Orleansy. Immediately, fans pounced on the idea that the Hornets name could somehow return. Two 20-something-year-old brothers, Scotty and Evan Kent, led a tireless campaign to bring back the buzz, using tweets, bar crawls, gatherings at games, appearances on TV and petitions. They were met with hysteria from fans and silence from the team. So Charlotte could get the Hornets name back, but the Bobcats might not do it? That would be the most Bobcats thing ever.
Slowly, though, there were signs that the Bobcats facade was cracking. In January, the team commissioned a Harris Interactive poll asking whether fans wanted the name back. The overwhelming answer was yes. Still, there was silence from the team. It wasn't until May that Jordan announced that the Hornets name would return. It took until November for the team to confirm the teal and purple colors would be coming back.
Scotty and Evan Kent were invited up to an executive suite before Saturday night's game. There, Bobcats communications man Mike Cristaldi told them the team's slow, deliberate pace had been on purpose. They were listening the whole time, just not responding. There's plenty more work to do, he said. Hugo the Hornet will come back, but he'll be modernized. New Hornets gear goes on sale in January. Jerseys should be ready by the summer. This will be an exciting night, the brothers said. But it's only the beginning.
If this still seems like a lot of uproar over a logo and some colors, know this: Charlotte is a city of aesthetics. The buildings are shiny. Adjectives like "world class" and "new South" are thrown around a lot. It's one of the few American cities where skyscrapers and apartment complexes are being built as fast as they can, because a few decades ago, people started coming and haven't stopped. In the 25 years since the Hornets started playing, the population has nearly tripled.
And because a lot of people here grew up somewhere else, it's a town where everybody brings their own loyalties with them. When the Lakers, Celtics or Knicks come to town, there's usually a loud roar in the stands when the road team does something worth cheering about. The people with the money to buy tickets mostly grew up rooting for some other team ...
... Except those that cheered for the old Hornets. The kids who watched Dell Curry and Alonzo Mourning are now adults, and they have a voice. They want a team with some history. The Bobcats don't have it. The Hornets do. If they can't bring the memories back, the name and colors will have to do. Scotty Kent works at a Lidz hat store in Charlotte's SouthPark Mall. An order of 300 retro Hornets hats came in Saturday morning. Only 60 were left by Saturday night.
Al Bello/Getty Images
At the arena, the halftime video had whipped the crowd into a frenzy. A sinister-looking hornet flew across the jumbotron until he sunk his stinger into the screen. There it was. A decidedly modern logo for a nostalgic name. The cheering rumbled the stands. It didn't stop for several minutes.
Then, the lights came up, the Bobcats logos reappeared, and the game went on. The noise died down. The Bobcats lost. But for a moment, the arena roared, the hive buzzed, and basketball in Charlotte was what it had been, and what it could be once again.
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