Kevin O'Connor says the Charlotte Hornets are the team nobody in the Eastern Conference wants to see in the play-in, and he did not leave much room for debate. In a discussion with Esfandiar Baraheni, the Yahoo Sports senior NBA analyst called Charlotte the most dangerous team that could come out of the play-in and said the Hornets belong in the conversation with the East’s top seeds.
“It is undoubtedly the Charlotte Hornets, not even close,” O'Connor said, adding that there is “nobody in here that puts fear in the two seed or the one seed in the Eastern Conference like the Hornets should.” His point was simple: Charlotte is only in the play-in because of a bad start, not because it lacks talent. O'Connor said the Hornets were about two games from the five seed in the Eastern Conference at one point, a gap that underscores how close this group came to changing its postseason path entirely.
What makes Charlotte dangerous, O'Connor said, is the offense. He described the Hornets as “one of the best offenses in the NBA,” built on the shot creation of LaMelo Ball, Kon Knipple and Brandon Miller, who generate a steady stream of quality three-point looks. He also praised Charles Lee, saying the coach has been excellent at getting the most out of the roster. In O'Connor’s view, that combination gives Charlotte the kind of upside that can tilt a short series if the team catches the right rhythm.
The context matters because the Hornets are being measured against a different kind of play-in field. O'Connor said he would have liked to see Charlotte in the seven-eight matchup and expected a Pistons-Hornets series, with the idea being that both teams would have made for a sharper test. He even went so far as to say he would have loved a Celtics-Hornets series because he thought it would have been “ultra-competitive,” a view that frames Charlotte as a low seed with real postseason bite rather than a routine underdog.
That optimism came with one fresh warning. O'Connor pointed to last weekend’s Detroit-Charlotte game, saying Detroit “punched them in the mouth in the fourth quarter.” It was the kind of finish that reminds anyone looking at the Hornets’ upside that the promise is real, but so is the pressure of a playoff game. Charlotte may not have the cleanest path into the bracket, but in O'Connor’s eyes, it has the most dangerous one.
