This is a make-or-break season for Charlotte Hornets. Time to win, or time for change

Much like Carolina Panthers fans, supporters of the Charlotte Hornets are sick and tired of being sick and tired.

The Hornets actually have a longer playoff drought streak than the Panthers. It was 2016 for the Hornets’ last true foray into the postseason. It was 2017 for the Panthers. Since then, Charlotte’s two highest-profile pro teams have mostly stunk it up.

But the 2023-24 Charlotte Hornets have a chance to do something special: To be different.

And it better be different.

Because if it’s not any different, I would bet that coach Steve Clifford, general manager Mitch Kupchak and a fair amount of the roster won’t be here at this time next year.

Put yourself in the shoes of the team’s new owners, Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin. They don’t have a lot of Charlotte-based loyalty at stake here as this crossroads season approaches.

They have a star already — LaMelo Ball, signed over the summer to a lucrative new contract. They are millionaire businessmen who are adept at thinking outside the box — hence this high-profile new sponsorship with “MrBeast” (look him up if you need to, because I certainly did — although my 16-year-old daughter knew exactly who he was).

But what Schnall and Plotkin really want is to win. They kept the front office and head coach they inherited in place for this regular season, which begins Oct. 25 with three straight home games. But I’m sure they have all sorts of ideas about how they could change things around if it all goes bad again, like it usually has.

What the new guys want is to win. They love basketball. But they don’t want to own a team. They want to own a winning team.

The Hornets, though, are a losing team, and they were for almost all of Michael Jordan’s unsuccessful tenure as the team’s primary owner. They went an embarrassing 27-55 a season ago. Oddsmakers don’t think they’ll be much better in 2023-24, setting Charlotte’s over-under on wins at 31.5.

A season like that would slot Charlotte into its normal spot in the NBA lottery. The lottery spot has been something you can count on in Hornets-land, much like a Gordon Hayward injury or a fan fondly recalling Alonzo Mourning’s shot that beat the Boston Celtics in a 1993 playoff series (it was 30 years ago, and sadly it remains the team’s highwater mark).

But this Hornets team really should win a lot more than 31.5 games. Clifford set a tone at Media Day on Monday when he said: “This will be 20-something years for me in the NBA, but it’s my 10th year as a head coach. ... We’re young. But to me, this is the most talented team I’ve ever coached, as a head coach.”

That’s not a small statement, because Clifford also coached Charlotte’s last good team, the 48-34 Hornets squad of 2015-16. That squad, featuring an in-his-prime Kemba Walker and a reborn Al Jefferson, was the last Charlotte team to make the playoffs. It lost a seven-game thriller to the Miami Heat in the first round.

Clifford believes this team, eight years later, is more talented than that one.

I don’t actually agree —they’ll have to prove it — but I’ll admit there’s a legitimate debate. The Hornets get versatile forward Miles Bridges back this year after he serves the final 10 games of his 30-game NBA suspension for pleading no contest to a felony domestic violence charge. I’m not thrilled he’s back, as I’ve written before, but the fact is that he is back, and his presence alone makes the Hornets better.

Then there’s No. 2 overall draft pick Brandon Miller, a wing who’s going to play right away and who could be an X factor if he has a big year.

Hayward and Terry Rozier, the team’s two most senior players, “killed it in September,” according to Clifford, in the team’s workouts, and will be major factors once again.

Looming over it all, of course, is Ball.

Ball only played in 36 of a potential 82 games last season and that wrecked the season more than anything else. I made a joke about Hayward’s availability earlier, but Hayward only missed 32 games last season. Ball missed 46, and his ankles have turned into his personal albatross. Ball said Monday he’s wearing ankle braces this year, and he better be, given those repeated ankle injuries. They’ve got to have a healthy LaMelo for any of it to work this season.

In other words, this is a make-or-break season for the Charlotte Hornets — for the players on the court, the coaches supervising them and the front office that picked them.

It’s going to be good, or it’s all going to change. Again.