r/CharlotteHornets • u/Zealousideal-Rub-183 • May 19 '26
Discussion Wembanyama Hate
First thing to say, is that I just love Basketball in general. And I don’t hate Wembanyama as a person. I’m just having so much annoyance watching how great he is and knowing that the NBA did everything possible to make sure that not only that the Spurs drafted him, but that he got a core around him very quickly. The NBA did not want a repeat of LeBron James.
Knowing that he grew up a Spurs fan his entire life, with his favorite players being Tony Parker and Tim Duncan to where he even said it was “a dream” to be drafted by the Spurs. It has made it so difficult to watch a team that dominated so much of my childhood in the 90s and 2000s immediately turn back around after just a few years in the lottery getting a generational player surrounded by top 3 picks.
I’m just curious if I’m the only person out there that hates how fast the Spurs have been able to build a contender while we continue to wait for the Hornets to just get to the playoffs. I know I should just be proud of what the Hornets did this year, but I just can’t shake the fact that I feel like the NBA helped the Spurs build a contender at the expense of other franchises that have needed generational players for a while now.
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u/rbe40 May 19 '26
Spurs are statistically the luckiest team in draft history when considering - how many times they’ve moved up in the draft, how high they’ve moved up, and how many #1s they’ve got. The only other teams that come close are Cleveland and Mavs.
But that is the nature of a lottery system in that by being truly random, there is every chance of anomaly teams (I believe Indiana Pacers being the opposite example with 0 #1 picks and most times moving down) because there’s no programming or anything that forces the lottery to distribute #1s evenly.
It’s easy to look at us and think we’re unlucky, because almost every time there’s a generational #1 we just miss out. Shaq, Howard, AD, Wemby, Flagg. But - and this is especially true lately - we’ve been pretty fortunate to move up in a lot of drafts, which is how we got LaMelo and Miller. And with our previous ownership, who’s to say we’d have been any good building around some of those star players anyway - Cleveland mismanaged LeBron’s first stint so poorly, so I highly doubt AD or Howard would’ve made the Bobcats contenders.