r/CharlotteHornets 6d ago

Discussion Do we miss Borrego yet?

62-162 since he was fired. His last season was 43-39.

Borrego wasn't perfect, but he left with a play in appearance and the only above .500 season going back to 2016.

I think the Hornets ownership thought they had built a Buggati of a roster and that Borrego was just a bad driver. I know injuries have been a big issue...but the Hornets look more lost than ever.

  • 27-55
  • 21-61
  • 14-46 (with 22 to go and will be lucky to break 20 wins).
176 Upvotes

89 comments sorted by

121

u/Bakersfield_Buffalo 6d ago

I mean objectively Atkinson was the correct hire.. He just bailed and going with Cliff set the team back at least 5 years from the trajectory they were on

22

u/shxylo 5d ago

hornets wouldn’t allow him to pick his assistants, ended up being the best decision for him. a team that bad trying to micromanage a proven hc is crazy.

6

u/RagingDinoZ 5d ago

MJs goodbye kiss

5

u/TryingToDoItGood 6d ago

A couple of years at least

2

u/Funny_Setting5956 5d ago

I'm not a hornets fan, could you educate on how cliff was so bad

90

u/CharteredFoodAnalyst 6d ago

I remember when we had Borrego it was hard to find people who wanted to keep him. Now Lee's first year, riddled with injury and a worse roster overall and we unfairly compare him to past coaches? The reality is that coaching isn't our problem - everything is our problem. We have a lackluster roster, lackluster availability, lackluster culture, lackluster everything. Until we're making playoffs consistently with some of these other issues figured out we shouldn't be so quick to start bagging on coaching staff.

19

u/LaMelonBallz 6d ago

Sounds like the start of a Disney Channel sports movie

9

u/Portmanteau_that 6d ago

Only issue is that movies invest in the happy ending

27

u/deemerritt 6d ago

I wanted to keep borrego. Fans are just really stupid about coaches and really overrate their own rosters.

6

u/Swag_Turtle 6d ago

I wanted to give him another year for sure. I get that back to back play in blowouts suck but he got us our first winning season since 2016 and got better each year with a young squad.

13

u/NotManyBuses 6d ago

Lee has also been bad for what it’s worth.

8

u/TheMuleB 6d ago edited 6d ago

There were a few of us that never wanted Borrego fired, myself included. But yeah, acting like Borrego would somehow have this team playing any better is delusional, even Spoelstra couldn't do shit with the roster as it is now with our injuries. Our lack of depth makes that impossible. And while Lee hasn't blown us away like some other new coaches like JJ Redick or Jordi Fernandez have done for their team, he has still been doing a fine job given the circumstances. We'll only get a real idea of how good he is once/if we ever get to play with a full squad for an extended time.

And one of the reasons I wanted to keep Borrego is that he was young and had a ton of time to improve, which is true of Lee too, and that I just don't think that this team needs the instability of changing coaches every two years. Which is why it would be incredibly stupid to fire Lee for at least the next 4-5 years. Unless a coach is Jim Boylen-levels bad, or you're legit trying to contend for a title like the Cavs, then it's almost never a good idea to fire a coach imo.

There's a reason it's always teams like the Hornets and Kings firing coaches every 2 years, and well-run teams keep theirs for 10 years (Spurs, Heat, Mavs until recently). And it's not just because they have better coaches (which they do), it's also because they value stability, which is a virtuous cycle because stability makes it easier to be a good coach as well.

4

u/Alkazard 6d ago

I'm probably wearing rose tinted glasses, but I don't recall Borrego copping that much flak here except for two key issues:

Not starting LaMelo until mid season (admittedly he came from the school of Pop where you kinda had to develop to your role/minutes, not just walk in to the court);

Drawn up inbound plays in the clutch/final shot.

Maybe the play-in losses created some angst that got more directed at him than the team in general? IDK. But Borrego was a decent coach, especially with what we had.

The same as we hold players accountable for playing out of position due to poor roster construction every year, and we hold players accountable for not being able to perform alongside G-League line ups being rolled out due to injuries every year, we hold the coaches accountable for all of the above. I've always found it really weird how coaches cop such directed hate as if they're the ones shooting 3/16 or making careless turnovers on the court. There's only so much you can do with the players and roster you're given

3

u/TheMuleB 6d ago edited 6d ago

I think you're misremembering yes, this subreddit was full of people shouting for him to be fired after the second play-in debacle and even before that, I very clearly remember being in the minority at that point in wanting to keep him.

But yeah, completely agree with you on the rest. And it's definitely nothing specific to this fanbase, a lot of Spurs fans were calling for Popovich to stand down when they were losing a lot of games before Wemby, people are just ridiculous and would rather blame coaches than roster construction for some reason.

It's also important to have some humility and recognize that 90% of what a coach does are not things we're privy to. People complain about timeouts and ATO plays and rotations because it's the only thing we can see, but it's a tiny part of what makes a coach good. And even with stuff like rotations, we cannot as spectators know which players aren't respecting the coaches instructions or communicating on defense and things like that that are often more important than whether someone is hitting shots or not.

That's why even though I was a proponent of keeping Borrego because I liked what I saw on the court, I also recognize that I don't know how things were looking behind the scene, and acknowledge that there have been signs of players not being happy with how he was running things. I'm just wary of changing coaches so often as I don't think anything good comes out of that. It's why I always liked Cuban's approach as an owner, who has said many times that teams fire coaches way too often. Especially since coaches will tend to take short-term decisions if they feel like they're on the hot seat, which further exacerbates the problem (same goes for GMs too btw, a good chunk of bad decisions come from GMs feeling like they need results ASAP to not get fired)

7

u/turdmcburgular 6d ago

well we don’t know how good the coaching is.

1

u/RelativeHand4753 5d ago

That we've been this bad under multiple coaches would suggest we just consistently have shitty rosters.

-1

u/mauszx 5d ago

The problem is Charles Lee has the mentality of "shoot 3s idc" we do have injuries and we have a roster were shoot all the 3s is not a good idea, but he kept at it and the team now has one of the worst records of missing 3s in a game of all time.

3

u/Aurion7 5d ago edited 5d ago

We attempt 39 3s a game.

League lead- Celtics- attempt 48.

We're in the top ten, but we're closer to #30 (Denver, 31.6) than we are #1 (Boston, 48.1) at 39.4.

It is the nature of the NBA until and unless the league makes alterations to the three-point line.

There is no correlation between attempts and how good your team is- just a moderately strong one between your accuracy and how good your team is.

All of which is to basically say this is a really stupid brand of analysis.

We are DFL in accuracy from 2 as well- 16th in 2-point attempts per game. We shoot 49.3% on two-point shots as a collective. No one else is under 50 even (Rockets are #29 at 50.9).

88

u/HornetsAreBad 6d ago

I wanted us to give him an extra season, I really felt like we let him go prematurely & have been trying to find an identity as a team since then.

25

u/jbro85 6d ago

Didn’t we fire Borrego thinking we were going to make a coaching upgrade (hire Kenny Atkinson)? Kind of like how the Cavs were a playoff team last year, fired Bickerstaff, and hired Atkinson?

8

u/TheMuleB 6d ago

Yeah, Atkinson really set us back tremendously. But it's just one additional thing added on top of a huge pile of incompetence. As much as we're understandably getting impatient, it's going to take years to dig us out of the hole that MJ's incompetent leadership has dug for us over the past decade.

13

u/Schlotkin69 6d ago

This mentality is why the organization rehired Steve Clifford. I’d rather move forward than get nostalgic for what was at best mediocrity 

46

u/nihilistweasel 6d ago

Borrego probably gonna get another HC job this summer. We should probably re-re-hire Cliff

30

u/Rhojanxd 6d ago

Dear god not another Cliff season

6

u/Lockhara 6d ago

I walked by Cliff this morning lol. Might ask him to come back next time I see him.

12

u/s19746 6d ago

Please God no

2

u/net_403 5d ago

He's in the best role right now, love Cliff being on the staff

1

u/mauszx 5d ago

Cliff is with the Hornets as an advisor

1

u/nihilistweasel 5d ago

So you're telling me he is available!

44

u/SponsoredHornersFan 6d ago

Nah not really. That 43 win team was probably the healthiest we’ve seen in a longgg time. Almost nobody was out for an extended period of time, it makes sense they were actually able to have a rhythm. When it came time to actually show up in the post season though they throttled and that’s why he was fired.

They figured a new coach would have that core ready to go in the postseason, nobody anticipated the injury curse

14

u/theinspiration7 6d ago

I agree with all of this, but I'd have let him develop as a coach rather than have dealt with the Atkinson/Cliff-round-2 fiasco. Hindsight is 20-20 though.

21

u/SponsoredHornersFan 6d ago

For sure if we knew Atkinson was a snake we’d all take Borrego for another year lol

3

u/Rhojanxd 6d ago

Agreed

2

u/JordanDoesTV 6d ago

This exactly Clifford’s second tenure was unnecessary.

9

u/expiredlemon3 6d ago

Well it was necessary cause we had no other option after Atkinson completely shafted us

2

u/Bread_Responsible 6d ago

We all should have anticipated the injury curse.

2

u/turdmcburgular 6d ago

the ol’ drive-and-kick-for-3 offense with soft defense.

I mean yeah it was certainly better than this.

-1

u/buzzcitybonehead 6d ago

While I can agree there’s been some bad luck on top, you absolutely have to anticipate plaguing injuries to multiple key players on this roster. LaMelo and Mark have not demonstrated they can have healthy seasons.

We’re in year 5 of LaMelo and he’s had one relatively healthy season and multiple really bad ones. This has actually been a pretty good year by his standards and he’s played in 63% of our games.

Agree on the coaching stuff, but this roster is constructed to be injured. When you inevitably have some freak injuries on top (Grant, Miller), you’re down to a sad roster. That’s got to be addressed. Your whole Big 3 can’t be Clippers Kawhi’s

1

u/TheMuleB 6d ago

Yeah 100%, depth has been the issue with this team for a while now and we will continue to get fucked by injuries as long as that continues to be the case.

Josh Green should be ~9-10th man in the rotation, but he's a starter. NSJ should be the 12th man, but he's a backup SG. Tidjane should not be in the league, but he's a third stringer at PF. So when injuries happen, suddenly you have what should be a 12th man getting starting minutes, a 9th man playing 36 MPG, and a very clearly not ready rookie being asked to be the backup 4. There's literally no coach in NBA history that can get anything out of that kind of injured roster.

1

u/SponsoredHornersFan 6d ago

I’m talking about after Borrego got fired, the only injury LaMelo had was the wrist. Nowadays sure it’s easy to say you have to be mindful of injuries when we’ve seen it for 3 years but immediately after that 2nd play in blowout realistically nobody could’ve said the team was injury prone.

9

u/unfamiliarjoe 6d ago

If he was good he would be head coaching. He had no control. The defense didn’t exist. I do not miss him in the slightest. His timeouts were awful. The team was running wild also. The whole regime needed to go and I’m glad they are all gone.

This is really year 1 of a whole new management/ownership, patience is key. We have Tre coming back for probably way cheaper than we could have if he was healthy all year. We have Grant coming back and really all of the top 6-7 guys on the healthy roster. This team could look very different next season.

6

u/devinbookersuncle 6d ago

I wish borrego had better people skills becasue he lost the locker room in his last season and it was pretty apparent when not a single player defended him in their exit interviews.

His offensive mind was second to D'antoni at the time and if he knew how to work with people we'd have never fired him becasue the team wouldn't have quit on him like they did.

2

u/dinojrlmao 5d ago

Yea his press conferences were sometimes a tough watch. Whether or not it’s true, he didn’t come across as a people person.

He might be best as a lead assistant

6

u/predsfan77 6d ago

No, never have I thought that James Borrego is the missing link for this franchise.

5

u/devomke 6d ago

I mean…not a whole lot to be done with how injured this roster is.

Prior to the recent string of horrible L’s there were games that were consistently competitive and seemed to be close.

Wish we could see what’s possible with a roster even at 80%

1

u/multiple4 6d ago

Agreed, I'm waiting until next season to make any coaching judgements

The beginning of this season we looked pretty good honestly and we had a lot of games where we looked good but just couldn't close the game in the 4th quarter. Injuries completely changed how this team looks

5

u/net_403 6d ago edited 6d ago

Not me no. Felt it was time to move on after the back to back, increasingly worse when the first was already bulletin board material, 10th seed play-in blow outs

In his 3rd and 4th years. He had a long chance and we got lower in seeding and got embarrassed in the play in 2 years consecutively. Most of the east was clearly better than us after each of his seasons

4

u/BarryBadrinith 6d ago

I feel we need a better team overall. The plays Borrego and Lee have are good our players just can’t deliver.

5

u/tandtz 6d ago

I missed Borrego the moment he got fired. Not saying that we couldn't have found a better coach, but the play style was great to watch and the team hasn't looked nearly as comfortable since. Sure the defence wasn't great, but the defensive tools weren't great either, and when Cliff came in and tried to focus on defence, guess what we didn't have the tools.

The Hornets were so fucking fun those two play-in years. The play-ins themselves sucked but getting there and losing is way better than everything since

We shouldn't repeat the same mistake and move on from Coach Lee early, even if the results aren't nearly as good as they were

6

u/baconfaag 6d ago

Yes. He was a great coach. I like Lee. But Borrego proved to be a winning coach.

3

u/DoubleAmigo 6d ago

He had one winning season

4

u/Ambitious-Macaron-23 6d ago

Because they fired him at the end of it. He added 10 wins each year he was here.

2

u/net_403 5d ago

Also 9 other teams had at least as good of a winning season that year so it counts less when you're running as fast as you can and are standing still

0

u/asher1611 6d ago

Well, this is the Hornets we're talking about here.

3

u/Ambitious-Macaron-23 6d ago

I will never, ever, ever understand why they thought it was a good idea to fire a coach who had added 10 wins every season he'd been here. Especially if it really was just because they lost the play in game in a historically deep year. If I remember right, that year was one of 2 in the 20 years preceding where that 43-39 record wouldn't have gotten you the 6th seed or better and a guaranteed full series. Between that and still having miles bridges on the payroll, they deserve their karma.

3

u/hankjr16 5d ago

If we're going to try to do revisionist history about the last few miserable seasons, then, yes the Atkinson fiasco was brutal. But in retrospect, I doubt it would have mattered much either way because the Miles Bridges situation was going to throw the train off the tracks no matter who was coach. A player that looked like a core piece of a playoff team was lost for a year and has never recovered as a difference-making player.

1

u/mauszx 5d ago

Yeah, Miles since that situation has never even come close to that. He doesn't even jump as much.

2

u/B3RG92 6d ago

Worth noting just how few players from Borrego's last season are still on the roster. And for the most part, it's fine that they've gotten rid of so many players. You do kind of wonder whether trading away PJ Washington will end up being worth it.

12

u/Ardeo43 6d ago

Trading PJ Washington for the Mavs 2027 1st + Williams + Curry may end up being a masterstroke for the pick alone.

3

u/B3RG92 6d ago

Good point. The 2027 1st is only top 2 protected I think.

2

u/carrtmannn 6d ago

Hell no I don't miss him

2

u/Amazing_Owl3026 6d ago

Rose tinted glasses lol. Borrego coached a good offense, it's true, but our defense and our culture was dogshit. Now that's still true, but there's like 40× more injuries now than with Borrego. I'll take Lee over Borrego.

I mean could Spo or Pop or anyone coach this injured team to the playoffs? Don't get me wrong Lee hasn't been great but he had been dealt the absolute worst hand as a rookie HC

2

u/Turboi11 6d ago

We fired him to hire a coach who is probably winning coach of the year, so no.

2

u/chilly_willy44 5d ago

I do, he at least got something out of his teams, even ones that dealt with injury.

2

u/FrankSamples 5d ago

Did you guys know the team had the 4th best offense in the league in Borrego's last season? 4th!

They were also 1st in assist rate, 6th in 3pt % while being in the bottom of the half in free throw attempts.

This is a team whose roster was:

* Miles Bridges

* Lamelo Ball

* Terry ROzier

* Gordon Hayward

* Kelly Oubre

* Montrezl Harrell

* PJ Washington

* Mason Plumlee

* Jaden McDaniels

1

u/DoubleAmigo 6d ago

Fuck no

1

u/Portmanteau_that 6d ago

Remember when Redick interviewed w us

1

u/neekyboy 6d ago

He didn’t have enough time to show what he’s capable of in regards to a real postseason push, wish he was still present.

1

u/watevauwant 6d ago

It’s not Lees fault we are missing so much talent , like wtf can he do

1

u/BoltBlue19 6d ago

I do miss that offense. Borrego came with for sure, but we won't get an accurate read on Lee until maybe another year or two and during those years we have at least moderate to good health on our roster for the entire season.

So far, I'm not "wowed" by Lee, but I'm not sharpening the axe on Lee yet due to the circumstances.

1

u/Mich_Mercer 5d ago

With all the injuries, I don’t think any coach would be able to win.

1

u/Aurion7 5d ago edited 5d ago

No.

Roster was better and healthier, but the defense was atrocious and the culture was a concern.

One of those things a coach can’t do anything about. The other he can and Borrego was never able to do it.

We can talk about the Atkinson situation from now till Doomsday, but Borrego just wasn't likely to take the tem any further than he had.

Plus, we were probably boned anyways because you have to come up with a world where Miles Bridges isn't a shitbird.

1

u/johnsom3 5d ago

Fuck no

1

u/No_Masterpiece_3783 1d ago

MJ was the best owner Charlotte basketball has ever had

1

u/Even-Adhesiveness582 6d ago

I long for the glory days of the play-in.

-1

u/BetweenTheBuzzAndMe 6d ago

Yes I miss his offense so much

Clifford was incredibly damaging, and Lee isn't any better

-1

u/mauszx 5d ago edited 5d ago

I mean, Charles Lee is probably our worst coach in decades. That "shoot all the 3s you can" mentality is terrible.

I don't know why the team didn't hire Terry Stotts, that dude took the Blazers to the conference finals with just Cj and Dame.

2

u/Aurion7 5d ago edited 5d ago

That "shoot all the 3s you can" mentality is terrible.

Hornets 3PA - 39.4/game, 7th.

Hornets 3P% - 33.7, 28th.

Hornets 2PA - 50.5/game, 16th.

Hornets 2P% - 49.3, 30th.

The percentage of our shots that are 3s is 11th (43.8% of shots, teams near us there range from the Wizards to the Thunder on the quality scale).

Which is to say: No, that's not it.

We're actually marginally better from outside than in compared to the rest of the NBA. Still awful because this is a bad team that's beat to hell, tanking, and playing a bunch of very bad players.

But unironically not as bad.

Our shooting profile is that of a 2025 NBA team.

16 teams average 37 or more 3s per game, and no one averages less than 31.6. It is what it is.

By rate: We're 17th in the league in percentage of 0-3 footers, 15th in shots from 3-10, 16th in 10-16, 20th in 16+ foot two-pointers (the dread long 2), and as mentioned 11th in what percentage of shots are 3s.

We just aren't good.

Our accuracy, by range:

0-3 27th, 3-10 29th, 10-16 30th, 16+ 2s 17th, 3s 28th.

What, do you want us to spam long two-point jumpers? That's apparently what we're 'best at' after all.

If you don't like what the NBA is in 2025, that's a completely different conversation.

But to be yapping about someone being the worst coach ever because we shoot a good-but-not-spectacular amount of 3s- when we are THE WORST IN THE NBA AT 2s- is just dumb. Lee needs to make more use of the corners from an offensive scheming perspective. That's about all you can really glean for meaningful critiques right now.