By Tess DeMeyer, Mike Vorkunov and Eric Nehm
The Charlotte Hornets looked to the top of their conference for their next head coach, hiring Boston Celtics assistant Charles Lee on Monday. Lee, 39, spent this season on the Celtics’ coaching staff after a decade on Mike Budenholzer’s staffs with the Milwaukee Bucks and Atlanta Hawks.
Lee will replace former Hornets coach Steve Clifford, who stepped down from the role at the end of the season. Other candidates considered for the role included Miami Heat assistant Chris Quinn, former NBA player and current broadcaster JJ Redick, and Lindsey Harding, the coach of the G League’s Stockton Kings.
The Hornets went 21-61 this season and will likely get a top-five pick in the NBA Draft on June 26. The draft lottery is Sunday.
The hire is the latest in an organization-wide transformation over the last year. The franchise got new owners last summer when Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin bought the team from Michael Jordan. The Hornets hired Jeff Peterson to head basketball operations in February, and he has slowly filled out his front office.
Lee marks Peterson’s biggest decision yet. The two were together in the Hawks organization roughly a decade ago, where Lee was an assistant on Budenholzer’s staff, Peterson was a rising executive, and Schnall was a minority owner.
A new chapter begins. We’re thrilled to announce the new Head Coach of your Charlotte Hornets, Coach Charles Lee! 🐝👏
Presented by @CorcoranHM
— Charlotte Hornets (@hornets) May 9, 2024
Lee has been a head-coaching candidate for several years and was a finalist for the Washington Wizards job in 2021. He’s a Budenholzer disciple but spent this season on the bench in Boston as the Celtics ran up the best record in the NBA.
He tried to be pragmatic even in rejection as he sought previous jobs, he said, as he took the feedback from teams who chose someone else.
“What am I going to have to do to grow so that one day I can be in the seat of being a head coach for one of these organizations?” Lee said in 2022 of what he took from the interview cycles. “There are only 30 of them and it was kind of tough to keep hearing no. But after self-reflection, you take the feedback, and now it’s just my responsibility to keep trying to grow in those areas that they think that I can show some improvement in.”
He’ll take over what should be a mostly revamped roster. The Hornets have Brandon Miller and LaMelo Ball as franchise pillars and will have a lottery pick this June.
Lee spent five seasons in Milwaukee before his move to Boston, winning a championship with the Bucks in 2021. Lee was part of a staff that excelled defensively year-over-year with Brook Lopez as the anchor of the team’s drop pick-and-roll coverage. In Charlotte, 22-year-old 7-footer Mark Williams may be able to excel in a similar role under Lee.
Offensively, with Giannis Antetokounmpo running the show, the Bucks helped usher in the NBA’s use of five-out spacing and regularly put Antetokounmpo in the best possible situation to succeed. Lee, who has always been great at connecting with players because of his engaging personality, will need to find a way to do the same thing with Ball, the Hornets’ star.
On top of what he learned in Milwaukee, Lee surely picked up some new skills for empowering players as the Celtics have one of the league’s most talented rosters, but also thrived this season as their best players sacrificed for the collective and ran interesting, team-first concepts on both ends of the floor.
Required reading
(Photo: Ron Chenoy / USA Today)
