📍 Charlotte, North Carolina
🏀 Home of the Charlotte Hornets

Emblazoned in purple and teal, the NBA’s Hornets first arrived in the Queen City in 1988, playing on the outskirts of town in the cavernous Charlotte Coliseum. An uninspiring venue surrounded by endless parking lots, the Coliseum would only last for 17 years before being demolished and replaced by a far more comfortable and convenient arena for Charlotte’s basketball team. Standing in the Fourth Ward of bustling Uptown since 2005, the building now known as Spectrum Center has been a sleek and contemporary home for the Hornets and their loyal fans.

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As a team, the Hornets captured the imagination of basketball fans in the Carolinas, but the team’s home arena left much to be desired. Nicknamed “The Hive”, the old Coliseum lacked any real amenities and was situated in a far-flung area near the airport. The building was, however, the largest NBA-specific venue at the time, seating more than 24,000 fans. But the Coliseum’s unignorable drawbacks sadly forced the relocation of the team to New Orleans in 2002. There, the Hornets would continue playing at the now Smoothie King Center in front of some of the league’s smallest crowds. Following the 2012-13 season, the team was rebranded as the New Orleans Pelicans, allowing the Hornets moniker to return to Charlotte.

Meanwhile, the Queen City had received an expansion franchise in 2004 in the form of the Charlotte Bobcats. A decade later, when the old Hornets name returned to its rightful owner, the Bobcats also assumed the history of the former team. Starting with the 2014-15 season, Buzz City was back.

The second iteration of “The Hive”, Spectrum Center seats more than 19,000 for Hornets games, though it can hold a thousand more for college basketball events. Built in 2005 and designed to be the epicenter of Charlotte sports for decades, Spectrum Center received massive renovations in 2016 – highlighted by a new center-hung scoreboard that resembles a real-life hornet’s nest – just in time to host its biggest event yet: the 2019 NBA All-Star Game. The arena has also hosted the ACC Tournament and a slew of March Madness games on multiple occasions, including #16 UMBC’s miraculous upset of #1 Virginia in 2018. And while both the upper and lower concourses are already wide and modern, even more upgrades to the arena’s aesthetic are slated to be complete by 2027, ensuring the venue will continue to host some of the biggest basketball events in the South.

Stars from both iterations of the Hornets franchise have thrilled Charlotte fans over the last 40 years, from Alonzo Mourning, Glen Rice and Muggsy Bogues to Kemba Walker and Miles Bridges. Despite their star power, the Hornets have failed to have much postseason success. The original team made the playoffs seven times, advancing as far as the conference semifinals, while the revived franchise has only touched the First Round three times, losing on every occasion.

A Hornet’s Nest of Rebellion
After the Battle of Charlotte in 1780, British General Charles Cornwallis called the city “a hornet’s nest of rebellion” and the description has stuck with the Queen City’s populace ever since. In addition to inspiring the name of Charlotte’s NBA franchise, it is also the source of the “Battle of the Hornet’s Nest”, an annual interconference college basketball matchup between the Charlotte 49ers and Davidson Wildcats.

Thankfully, the Hornets have a solid home in which to continue their march to their first-ever NBA championship, a fine facility with lots of fan-focused amenities and a stellar location in the heart of Uptown Charlotte. With some new development in the works in the area around the arena, Spectrum Center and the Charlotte Hornets will undoubtedly remain a crucial piece of the cultural landscape of the Queen City for a long time to come.