Welcome to Hoop Dreams, a season preview unlike any other you’ll read before the 2016-17 season tips off. The premise is simple. We’ll be providing 30 of these fictional forays because it simply stinks that only one team can win the title each year. The list of contending teams seems to shrink with each campaign, and we wanted to provide something to those fans who only get to dream of Larry O’Brien during the offseason. Before October, every team can win the NBA title. Don’t believe us? Then keep reading. – Ed
“It was all because of that one night,” Kemba Walker thinks. He’s on his knees in the middle of the Spectrum Center court, confetti showering over him as it falls from the ceiling and his teammates celebrate around him. As recently as four months before this moment, he had doubts that they would be in the playoffs at all. Instead he had images constantly swirling through his head about the team reverting to the laughing stock of the division that they were when he joined the squad as a young talent in 2011 and 2012.
As of February, the Hornets were four games back from the Hawks for the division lead and playing miserably. Their play calling out of timeouts was routinely atrocious, team communication even worse, and Walker was shooting a dismal 31 percent from the field. He’d had months like that before, but they usually came while he was settling in at the beginning of the season and weren’t indicative of potentially catastrophic yips. So he tried not to let it get to him.
“Right the ship” he thought at the time, “we can click again and turn this thing around.”
Yet Charlotte couldn’t get things straightened out no matter how hard they tried, which might have been the problem all along. Instead of the team relaxing and continuing the strategy that had worked so well for them early in the season there was too much effort going into every screen, every no-look pass, every questionable shot from just inside the arc. A February stretch found them choking away a probable win to the Clippers on a terrible defensive possession in the last nine seconds, which the team followed up four days later in a near-identical loss to the Raptors.
In between, they barely snuck by a Sixers team that had been enjoying playing spoiler to the borderline playoff teams all winter. If it weren’t for a surprising second half performance from Roy Hibbert (17 points, 3 blocks, and a trio of assists to match) that recalled his early Indiana days, team morale might have been completely shot and thoughts of making the playoffs for the second year in a row a pipe dream.
Of course, Hibbert had been shaky early in the season and lost his starting spot to Frank Kaminsky after the first fortnight of games. But Kaminsky had a near breakdown around the holidays when he had to confront Bulls fans twice in less than 10 days, once at home and once on their own turf. No one could blame him for his downward turn, Chicago fans can be vicious and it might be a while longer before they stop blaming him and his homemade Steve Bartman jersey for their NLCS loss to the Dodgers in 7 agonizing games.
The rest of February wasn’t any better as the Hawks opened up an even larger division lead on the Hornets, and Steve Clifford’s team went 1-3 against Detroit, Sacramento, both LA franchises, yet thankfully came through for an important win against a surprisingly feisty Suns team. On the Friday before a potential trap game on the road against the Nuggets, Walker got a phone call that he never would have expected during the season.
“Kemba? It’s me.” Jim Calhoun said. “I’m at a bar off of Blake Street. Get over here, I need to talk to you.”
Kemba, completely in shock, almost dropped his phone in the blender that he was using to make his favorite protein shake. “Coach, what are you talking about? You’re in Denver?!”
“Don’t ask questions,” Calhoun answered, “and bring Lamb if you want. Whatever.”
Click.
Not sure what to think at all, Kemba crept to Jeremy Lamb’s hotel room down the hall and told him what was going on. Speechless, Lamb followed him and they made their way to an Irish pub (naturally) not far from the Pepsi Center and found none other than Jim Calhoun nursing a whiskey at the counter. The rest of the bar was conspicuously empty for downtown on a Friday night, but they had promised not to ask questions and they knew not to mess with their ex-coach so they kept their mouths shut.
What happened that night they promised never to reveal outside of the confines of the current roster, but Calhoun shared with them the actual secrets of the basketball universe. So much whiskey was involved that Lamb and Walker started to get concerned that they wouldn’t be able to play the next day, but they magically woke up in their own beds with no trace of a hangover, their call histories wiped clean, and no sign of the rest of the team or coaching staff having heard them returning at all hours the night before.
“Man, what the hell kind of whiskey did Coach give us last night?” Kemba texted Lamb.
“I don’t know, but it must have been magic or something because that was ridiculous.” Jeremy replied.
The last thing they remember before finding out exactly how to win an NBA championship was Calhoun muttering “Jordan knows all this s**t too, but of course he wouldn’t tell you. That grump. Oh, and Perry Ellis is really an immortal vampire posing as a 23 year-old college graduate. But don’t go spreading that around willy nilly.”
Everything turned around after that. It was like night and day from the middle stretch of the season. Kemba tested out Calhoun’s advice on Michael Kidd-Gilchrist first, who then wasted no time in dropping a ruthlessly efficient 31 points against Denver that same night even though he was only averaging 16.4 ppg all year. They immediately shared their apparently otherwordly knowledge with the entire team, and the rest was history.
With a 19-3 March and April, Charlotte secured the four seed in the East and absolutely demolished the Raptors faster than you could say “Drake is wearing a ridiculous outfit courtside tonight,” setting up a matchup against the formidable defending champions. The Cavs were no match for whatever playoff drugs Charlotte seemed to be on, though.
With an injured Kyrie on the bench and a (reasonable) assumption that they could steamroll the Hornets, the Cavs threw away any chance at an easy series when they came out in games one and two far too overconfident and lost at home. They managed to steal one on Charlotte’s court but were no match for a combined 48 points from an on-fire Nic Batum and MKG in Game 5, as well as Hibbert shutting down everything they tried to get going in the paint.
After that five game smothering of Cleveland, Charlotte felt they could accomplish the impossible – and they did. A tired and battered Boston team – coming off a seven-game series with Dwyane Wade’s tough Bulls team – went down easily. So did Oklahoma City, when the time came. The Thunder were so fired up after taking out their newfound foe Kevin Durant and the rest of the Golden State Warriors that they weren’t prepared for the Hornets’ energetic offense and suffocating perimeter defense. Westbrook was sluggish and moody, and Charlotte took advantage with quick passes and overwhelming vitality.
OKC did manage to take a game off of them, making the finals at least semi-respectable. So now the past few weeks were all a blur to Kemba, suddenly both an NBA and NCAA champion. He scanned the crowd for his mom, and found her beaming from the same seat she had occupied during every home game of the playoffs. He glanced over to Clifford, who was trying not to bawl as he hugged every player. Jeremy Lamb was shimmying away on the sideline, happier than he’d been in years it seemed.
As the celebration got truly underway on the court, Kemba glimpsed Calhoun himself watching from the top of the concourse, almost out of sight behind a fire door. A bunch of confetti swirled in front of Walker’s face and in the next instant Jim was gone.
As Marco Belinelli ran past center court screaming “Miracles can happen!” at the top of his lungs, Kemba kissed the Hornets logo and rose to go rejoice with his teammates.
“It wasn’t a miracle,” he whispered to himself, “it was the whiskey.”
