Charlotte Hornets

The Hornets that play in Charlotte today are the same franchise fans watched from 1988, but for twelve years the identity belonged to another city: the original team left for New Orleans in 2002, and Charlotte spent that stretch fielding the Bobcats instead. When the Bobcats took the Hornets name back in 2014, they inherited the old record along with it — including the ten playoff trips that predate the switch, none of which produced a conference or division title, let alone a championship.

George Shinn owned the franchise at its founding in 1988. The name came from the crowd rather than the front office: fans settled on Hornets in 1987, a reference to Charles Cornwallis, the British general who is said to have called the area a "hornet's nest of rebellion."

Home games are played at the Spectrum Center, which opened under a different name — Time Warner Cable Arena — and holds 19,444 for basketball. What the franchise has not done is win anything: no championship banner hangs in Charlotte, no conference title, no division title in either spell.

Everything traces back to 1988, before the move, before the Bobcats years, before the name came home.