“We need to challenge LeBron” – Michael Jordan once explained the biggest priority of his Hornets front office regime

“We need to challenge LeBron” – Michael Jordan once explained the biggest priority of his Hornets front office regime originally appeared on Basketball Network.

Michael Jordan didn’t have the easiest of regimes as the Charlotte Hornets franchise owner, from the rebranding efforts off the court to the search for consistency on it.

Taking over a franchise that had already lost its identity after the original Hornets moved to New Orleans, Jordan inherited the Bobcats in 2010 and soon began reshaping the brand.

In 2014, he brought the Hornets name back to Charlotte, reconnecting the city with its rich basketball past. But while the aesthetic was restored, the wins rarely followed.

LeBron was the benchmark

The struggle was never just about box scores or rebuilding phases.

Jordan’s Hornets found themselves stuck in a familiar middle ground: not bad enough to tank, not good enough to contend. Michael, the competitor he is, saw a different kind of benchmark looming in the East.

“For us to be successful in the East, we need to challenge LeBron [James], any team that LeBron’s playing on,” he said. “And if I can find a player that’s gonna challenge LeBron in a way that’s never going to take away from the overall aspect of what we trying to do as a team, to me that’s a plus.”

Draft picks often hovered between promising and pedestrian, free agents rarely saw Charlotte as a prime destination and coaching changes seemed more like routine maintenance than foundational shifts.

That was the essence of Jordan’s approach during a defining period of Eastern Conference basketball. LeBron James was the biggest obstacle, the litmus test for whether a team had real championship aspirations.

From dragging a youthful Cleveland Cavaliers squad to the 2007 NBA Finals to orchestrating a historic run in the Miami Heat with four consecutive championship-round appearances and then returning to deliver a title in Cleveland — James dictated the rhythm of the East for nearly a decade and a half.

Jordan’s Hornets, meanwhile, could never quite summon the firepower or fortitude to disrupt that rhythm. His most high-profile draft selection — Kemba Walker in 2011 — became a franchise cornerstone and a consistent scorer, peaking with a 25.6 points per game season in 2018-19.

But outside of Walker’s heroics and brief flashes from players like Al Jefferson and Nicolas Batum, Charlotte never found that one player who could stand toe-to-toe with James, the kind of force Jordan alluded to.

Moving in mediocrity

In 2016, the Hornets pushed the Heat to seven games in the first round, nearly toppling a playoff-tested unit. That series was emblematic of their ceiling: tough and competitive, but ultimately lacking the final gear.

Charlotte’s front office made moves to stay relevant — trades, mid-tier free agent signings and coaching adjustments — but without a transformative star or sustained player development, they kept bumping up against the same wall.

“We should not settle for making the playoffs, I think we should try to excel in the playoffs,” Jordan said.

That line reflected a mindset MJ desperately tried to instill in his organization, one that separated the merely competent from the truly competitive. Making the postseason wasn’t supposed to be a finish line, but rather the starting point for something greater.

Yet for much of Jordan’s tenure as majority owner, the Hornets struggled to even clear that first hurdle. Between 2010 and 2023, they reached the playoffs just three times (2010, 2014, 2016) and each time, they bowed out in the first round. Their postseason record across those three appearances stood at 3–12.

It wasn’t for lack of effort or vision. Rather, it was the byproduct of a franchise caught in limbo. They were never quite in a position to land a franchise-altering talent at the top of the draft and never able to lure the caliber of veteran who could change the team’s fortunes overnight.

Jordan, known for his unrelenting standards as a player, operated under the belief that excellence was attainable if the bar remained high. But being on the other side of the business, negotiating contracts, weighing cap space, evaluating prospects, came with complexities that didn’t exist on the hardwood.

Even his eventual decision to sell majority ownership in 2023 pointed to a hard truth, one that had defined much of his tenure — building a winner as an owner is a different game entirely.