Prologue
PROLOGUE
July, 2013
When to final buzzer sounded to close out the fifth and final game of the 2013 NBA Finals, Kobe Bryant walked off the court for the last time. It ended in defeat, a crash-and-burn kind of finish. Looking back, that’s only fitting.
Throughout most of his seventeen-year career Bryant had ruled over the NBA, going to the Finals ten times and winning a staggering eight NBA championships. As Bryant walked off the court the curtain was also coming down on the Charlotte Hornets dynasty, which had risen from expansion to become the standard bearer of excellence for professional basketball.
Everyone knew it was over. Now we can look back on the history of the greatest modern dynasty in professional sports.
If we were to truly trace back the origins to the route beginning we need to go back to the day of the 1994 NBA Draft, and to a transaction that did not even involve the Hornets.
NEXT: The Trade
July, 2013
When to final buzzer sounded to close out the fifth and final game of the 2013 NBA Finals, Kobe Bryant walked off the court for the last time. It ended in defeat, a crash-and-burn kind of finish. Looking back, that’s only fitting.
Throughout most of his seventeen-year career Bryant had ruled over the NBA, going to the Finals ten times and winning a staggering eight NBA championships. As Bryant walked off the court the curtain was also coming down on the Charlotte Hornets dynasty, which had risen from expansion to become the standard bearer of excellence for professional basketball.
Everyone knew it was over. Now we can look back on the history of the greatest modern dynasty in professional sports.
If we were to truly trace back the origins to the route beginning we need to go back to the day of the 1994 NBA Draft, and to a transaction that did not even involve the Hornets.
NEXT: The Trade