SN Archive (1995): Inside the Hornets' $84 million mistake that led to Alonzo Mourning trade

SN Archive (1995): Inside the Hornets' $84 million mistake that led to Alonzo Mourning trade originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

This article, 'Hornets got stung by their own moves' by Shaun Powell, originally appeared in the November 13, 1995 issue of The Sporting News.

There may be a tendency to lend sympathy to the Hornets, a small-market team that fell victim to cruel economics and couldn't afford to pay their franchise-type player what he wanted.

Instead, there are a number of owners who can barely control their laughter.

Those owners say the Hornets got what they deserved when they were forced to trade center Alonzo Mourning, who wouldn't accept their offer of $11.2-million per season. Weren't the Hornets the ones who inflated the player market three years ago by lavishing an $84-million contract on Larry Johnson when his original deal had four years left?

The logical question at that time was this: What could the Hornets do for Mourning, who was the better player? We know the answer today.

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The poor financial foresight by the Hornets started in 1988, when they constructed a 23,698-seat arena that lacked the many revenue-producing amenities you see in arenas today. While the Hornets would rank among the league leaders in attendance based on the amount of seats at Charlotte Coliseum, they were unable to generate additional income from the building.

Then they became guilty of falling in love with Johnson. After he won Rookie of the Year honors and became a cult figure in Carolina, Owner George Shinn was smitten and agreed with team President Spencer Stolpen to rework Johnson's contract. They made him the game's highest-paid player and justified it by saying salaries were headed that way anyway.

With the collective-bargaining agreement due to expire, the Hornets didn't want to lose any leverage with Johnson as he drew closer to the end of the original deal. They had lost that leverage earlier that season with Kendall Gill, who ultimately forced a trade to Seattle.

They also figured they would have enough to sign Mourning, because the team was making a mint in Charlotte. But they hardly expected the contract demands of Mourning. How was Mourning able to ask for $13 million per season? Easy.

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After Johnson's deal, the Nets were forced to meet Derrick Coleman's asking price of $7.5 million per year. Then the Bullets, who had zero leverage in their negotiations with free-agent-to-be Chris Webber, had to go one better: $10 million a season. Coleman and Webber were nice players, but they weren't Mourning.

While that domino effect pushed Mourning to a much higher level, three other factors surfaced:

The new labor agreement eliminated restricted free agency; billionaire Micky Arison took complete control of ownership in Miami; and the Hornets discovered, to their surprise, that their arena was actually inadequate.

Complete free agency gave A-list players such as Mourning incredible leverage. Arison hired Pat Riley and announced that he would do anything to make a winner of the Heat. With the realizations of the '90s economics swirling around them, the Hornets publicly acknowledged the problems at the Coliseum, which lacked mega-million-dollar, revenue-producing luxury suites.

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Mourning, who wasn't totally convinced the Hornets could win a title in the near future, threatened to walk next summer. If that happened, the Hornets wouldn't receive compensation.

So they had to trade him.

Not many teams wanted to meet his astronomical demands. But all it took was one. Riley hardly made a secret of his desire to have a center to build around in Miami, and he had a Generation X owner who agreed to satisfy the coach's demands.

So now the Hornets have players (Glen Rice, Matt Geiger, Khalid Reeves) they don't really need and lost the only player who could give them a chance to beat Shaquille O'Neal this decade.

But they made the rules in this game.