After the NBA’s growth in popularity expansion was only natural, and the city of Charlotte was only a natural site for one of the four new teams that would begin play over a two year period. Carolina had once been home to a popular ABA team known as the Cougars, and a hotbed for College talent with four major universities that had made the Final Four within a few seasons. The Hornets would play their first game on November 4th losing to the Cleveland Cavaliers 133-93 at the Charlotte Coliseum. The Hornets would earn their first win four days later when the beat the Los Angeles Clippers at home 117-105. Wins would not come often for the Hornets who finished last in the Atlantic Division with a 20-62 record. One of the bright spots was the strong play of Kelly Tripuka who led the team with 22.6 ppg, highlighted by three games in which he scored 40 points.

With the first pick in the 1991 NBA draft, the Hornets drafted power forward Larry Johnson from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Johnson had an impact season, finishing among the league leaders in points and rebounds, and winning the 1992 NBA Rookie of the Year Award. Additionally, Guard Kendall Gill led the club in scoring, averaging over 20 points per game. The team stayed in contention for a playoff spot until March, but finished the year with a 31–51 record.

The Hornets popularity with the city of Charlotte began to wane during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Many attributed this lapse in popularity to the team’s owner, George Shinn, who was slowly becoming despised by the people of the city. In 1997, a Charlotte woman claimed that Shinn had raped her, and the resulting trial severely tarnished his reputation in the city. The consensus was that while Charlotte was as basketball-crazy as ever, fans took out their anger at Shinn on the team. Shinn had also become discontented with the Charlotte Coliseum, which, although considered state-of-the-art when it opened in 1988, had by then been considered obsolete due to a limited number of luxury boxes. On March 26, 2001, both the Hornets and the Vancouver Grizzlies applied for relocation to Memphis, Tennessee, which was ultimately won by the Grizzlies. Shinn issued an ultimatum: unless the city built a new arena at no cost to him, the Hornets would leave town. The city initially refused, leading Shinn to consider moving the team to either Norfolk, Louisville, or St. Louis. Of the cities in the running, only St. Louis was a larger media market than Charlotte at the time; also, it was the only one of the four to have previously had an NBA franchise — the St. Louis Hawks, who moved to Atlanta in 1968.