Hornets hire Celtics assistant Charles Lee as head coach

By Mike Vorkunov, Eric Nehm and Jared Weiss

The Charlotte Hornets appeared to the highest of their convention for his or her subsequent head coach, hiring Boston Celtics assistant Charles Lee on Monday. Lee, 39, spent this season on the Celtics’ teaching workers after a decade on Mike Budenholzer’s staffs with the Milwaukee Bucks and Atlanta Hawks.

Lee will substitute former Hornets coach Steve Clifford, who stepped down from the role on the finish of the season. Other candidates thought-about for the function included Miami Heat assistant Chris Quinn, former NBA participant and present broadcaster JJ Redick, and Lindsey Harding, the coach of the G League’s Stockton Kings.

The Hornets went 21-61 this season and can possible get a top-five choose within the NBA Draft on June 26. The draft lottery is Sunday.

The hire is the newest in an organization-wide transformation over the past 12 months. The franchise received new house owners final summer season when Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin purchased the workforce from Michael Jordan. The Hornets employed Jeff Peterson to head basketball operations in February, and he has slowly stuffed out his entrance workplace.

Lee marks Peterson’s greatest resolution but. The two had been collectively within the Hawks group roughly a decade in the past, the place Lee was an assistant on Budenholzer’s workers, Peterson was a rising govt, and Schnall was a minority proprietor.

A brand new chapter begins. We’re thrilled to announce the brand 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 a number of years and was a finalist for the Washington Wizards job in 2021. He’s a Budenholzer disciple however spent this season on the bench in Boston as the Celtics ran up the very best document within the NBA.

He tried to be pragmatic even in rejection as he sought earlier jobs, he mentioned, as he took the suggestions from groups who selected another person.

“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 needs to be a principally revamped roster. The Hornets have Brandon Miller and LaMelo Ball as franchise pillars and can have a lottery choose this June.

Lee spent 5 seasons in Milwaukee earlier than his transfer to Boston, profitable a championship with the Bucks in 2021. Lee was a part of a workers that excelled defensively year-over-year with Brook Lopez as the anchor of the workforce’s drop pick-and-roll protection. In Charlotte, 22-year-old 7-footer Mark Williams might be able to excel in an analogous function below Lee.

Offensively, with Giannis Antetokounmpo operating the present, the Bucks helped usher within the NBA’s use of five-out spacing and frequently put Antetokounmpo in the absolute best state of affairs to succeed. Lee, who has at all times been nice at connecting with gamers due to his partaking character, might want to discover a strategy to do the identical factor with Ball, the Hornets’ star.

On high of what he discovered in Milwaukee, Lee certainly picked up some new abilities for empowering gamers as the Celtics have one of many league’s most gifted rosters, but additionally thrived this season as their finest gamers sacrificed for the collective and ran attention-grabbing, team-first ideas on each ends of the ground.

Lee has been instrumental in Boston this season as coach Joe Mazzulla’s high assistant. He is the first marketing consultant all through the sport on strategic selections and is mostly the opposite coach you will note on his ft working the sideline. He has been Jrue Holiday’s assigned coach, working with the Celtics’ huge summer season acquisition to seek out how he suits in with the system on each ends.

When high-profile assistants Lee and Sam Cassell had been added to Mazzulla’s workers earlier than the season, it was obvious the group was bolstering the support system round their younger head coach whereas additionally bringing in viable candidates to interchange him in the event that they needed to make a change. However, it has been clear all year long that Lee has been absolutely purchased into this system and is well-liked all through the constructing. He has a charismatic and pleasant demeanor however can be recognized to speak trash whereas competing in drills. Lee will possible be one of the crucial entertaining and talkative coaches within the league, now that he steps into the principle chair and in entrance of the digital camera.

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(Photo: Ron Chenoy / USA Today)