When Steve Clifford told the Charlotte Hornets in April he wasn’t going to coach them anymore, Jeff Peterson, the franchise’s new head of basketball operations, took a moment to reflect on what he wanted in a new one. He wrote down the traits he thought were important. Then, he set out on a search for his first head coach hire.
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A month later, and after speaking with more than 10 candidates, the Hornets and Peterson landed on Charles Lee as their new leader. The team’s front office was so intrigued by Lee, Charlotte was willing to wait more than a month for him to join the organization as he finished up an NBA championship-winning run on the Boston Celtics bench.
Peterson and Lee have history — they were with the Atlanta Hawks last decade, when Peterson was assistant general manager and Lee was an assistant under Mike Budenholzer — and Peterson was swayed by Lee during the search. He pointed to Lee’s playing experience at Bucknell and in Europe, his dalliance with a career on Wall Street, his background in player development and that he now has two rings to his name after winning his first on the Milwaukee Bucks bench in 2021.
“His tactical skills are great,” Peterson said. “He’s a champion. He’s won two championships. Which, obviously you can never, you know, there’s a premium on just being a winner, and he has that. And he’s just an amazing teacher and communicator. He’s going to do his best just to get everything he can out of each player. That’s a big reason why I went with him as well.”
Peterson believes “staffing is the most important thing you can do as a franchise,” and he has gone about rebuilding the Hornets. When he took over in early March, the Hornets were on their way to an eighth straight season out of the playoffs and a bleak end to Michael Jordan’s time as the team’s majority owner. Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin bought the franchise last summer and have begun to remodel in Charlotte.
Peterson came aboard as the new executive vice president of basketball operations. He hired Dotun Akinwale from Atlanta as his new assistant general manager, brought Ryan Gisriel with him from Brooklyn as VP of basketball ops and strategy, and took Patrick Harrel from the league office to be Charlotte’s VP of basketball insights and analysis. A front office that was previously seen as one of the league’s smallest has received a slew of new voices and personnel.
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The Hornets will now work to right-size a franchise that has won just 48 games over the last two seasons. Peterson has not put a timeline on how quickly he wants to build the team back to the playoffs.
“I don’t,” he said. “I think when you start to put timelines on things, you get in trouble. Just because we don’t know the jump Brandon (Miller) is gonna take. We don’t know the jump that Mark (Williams) and LaMelo (Ball) are gonna take. We don’t know what kind of season Tidjane (Salaun)’s gonna have. I think again, whenever you put a timeline on things like this, it can get you in trouble at times, just because you may over promise and under deliver. The only timeline we have in our head is just the day in front of us. How can we get better in this day? As long as we’re doing that, I think Charles and I will be pleased with the amount of progress that we make.”
The roster has young talent in Miller and Ball, and Charlotte selected 18-year-old Salaun, a 6-9 forward from France, sixth in the 2024 NBA Draft. Salaun was the youngest player in the draft, and Peterson raved about his work ethic and size for his position. Salaun averaged 9.6 points and four rebounds for Cholet in France’s top league this season.
“The guy loves being in the gym, loves to get better and loves the process,” Peterson said. “So, again, we can sleep at night knowing that he has those qualities, and then, not to mention, he has some skill to him, too. He can rebound and push. He can make his shot. So, we’re just really excited about, more than anything, his mindset and his approach to how we’re going to progress and build this thing out.”
But this offseason was mostly a slow one in Charlotte. The Hornets’ most profile move was re-signing Miles Bridges to a three-year, $75 million contract, keeping him around after he was arrested on felony domestic violence charges in June 2022, missed the entire 2022-23 season, and sat out the first 10 games of last season as part of a suspension. He pleaded no contest to the charges.
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Bridges was issued a criminal summons in October for a violation of a domestic violence protective order, misdemeanor child abuse and injury to personal property; charges related to those incidents were dropped in February because of a lack of sufficient evidence.
The Hornets also were part of the NBA’s first six-team trade, as they insinuated themselves into a deal that eventually came to encompass the Golden State Warriors, Dallas Mavericks, Minnesota Timberwolves, Denver Nuggets and Philadelphia 76ers. While the transaction mashed up a number of different deals, the Hornets, Peterson said, began with Denver. The front office wanted to preserve its cap space to take on another team’s bad contracts and trade assets and knew Denver wanted to deal Reggie Jackson.
“We did a really good job of pricing it out and be able to acquire those assets,” Peterson said. “That was the first domino and then after that we found out that Josh (Green) may be moving from Dallas. Josh is the guy that we’ve targeted in the past. So, when Josh was available, Dallas called us and asked if we would have interest. And then, we priced that out, and that was our role in the whole thing. Feels good to be a part of history.”
In all, the Hornets acquired Green from Dallas, Jackson and the 2029 and 2030 second-round picks from Denver, and sent out a 2025 76ers second-round pick and cash to the Nuggets.
(Photo of Peterson: Kent Smith / NBAE via Getty Images)
Mike Vorkunov is the national basketball business reporter for The Athletic. He covers the intersection of money and basketball and covers the sport at every level. He previously spent three-plus seasons as the New York Knicks beat writer. Follow Mike on Twitter @MikeVorkunov
