I have thoughts on this:
I feel like you answered your own question about the relative complacency. I think there’s very few Hornet fans whose favorite basketball team is the hornets. Wake, State, Duke, UNC won’t up and leave as you kind of allude to there. So while I care about the hornets and watch almost every game I don’t live and die with them like I do state games.
Would be perfectly happy with a team that won 46 to 50 games most years and played good basketball. Unfortunately we’re nowhere close to that and should’ve traded Kemba at the trade deadline last season. By the time all these awful contracts were done we would’ve had 3 top draft picks which hopefully netted some really good players.
But whatever, kinda pointless to get your hopes up the team will get smart when even the owner, GM, and assistant GM care more about UNC basketball than the Hornets