When the Charlotte Hornets announced they were retiring former Hornets legend Dell Curry’s jersey early last season, I knew it was only a matter of time before they made this announcement.
The Charlotte Hornets announced they will retire Muggsy Bogues’ No. 1 jersey, and co-owners Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall continue their trend for the second straight year (Curry) of honoring Hornets greats.
The greats of this franchise are few and far between, but one thing is certain:
Former Charlotte PG Muggsy Bogues is – and always has been – one of them.
Bogues played nine and a half seasons with Charlotte from 1988-89 (the team’s inaugural season) until halfway through the 1997-98 season, when Charlotte traded the notoriously five-foot-three and shortest-ever NBA player Bogues to the Golden State Warriors.
Bogues still sits second on the Hornets all-time list for total games played in purple and teal with 632 games played, only behind his soon-to-be rafters partner and former teammate of 9 years, Dell Curry.
I tell anyone I can that it’s severely underdiscussed amongst the NBA community how much of a sheer physical specimen Muggsy was coming out of Wake Forest.
The guy had calves the size of some people’s heads, was easily one of the league's fastest players, and was NOT a liability on defense, more often than not.
He was the most athletic person in the world for his size, and that's what he is remembered for…
But what people forget is how elite a defender he was. There was no playing Muggsy off the floor – he was a pest defensively, and your favorite 90s PGs hated matching up against him. They had to change their whole style of play against the Hornets because he attacked defense so differently. He had to.
He also has one of the highest assist-to-turnover ratios in NBA history — 18th overall all-time for all NBA players over an entire career; at multiple points in his career, he averaged more steals per game than turnovers.
Rick Bonnell – former Hornets beat writer for 30+ years for the Observer – wrote in an article one time, one I frustratingly couldn’t find, but he said once in the early Hornets’ days something along the lines of:
Bogues was the player who most embodied the name of the team for which he played -- quick, pesky, and ready to sting you out of nowhere.
Again, paraphrasing, but I remembered it all this time because the sentiment was 100% true. Kenny Smith also once said, “95% of the guards in the league had to change the way they played when they played against Muggsy.”
No amount of scouting reports ever took away his ability to take advantage of his opponents not being used to his size, and he played big minutes for multiple coaches in Charlotte because he was the real deal, not because he was lucky.
Bogues had come up playing against guys in Baltimore who sharpened his skills from day one.
Muggsy played at the legendary Dunbar High School alongside the late, great Reggie Lewis — whose last ever pro game was during the Hornets and Bogues’ first-ever playoff victory in 1993 — as well as David Wingate (future Hornets teammate) and Reggie Williams.
These Dunbar teams are widely regarded as some of the best high school basketball teams of all time, and it was lil ‘ol Muggsy who was the leader of those teams by all player accounts.
But he also grew up in a part of Baltimore that Bogues has said many times was far from the best place to be raised. Bogues was even shot at the age of 5.
By the time he made it to Wake Forest, he’d go on to have a historic career with the Demon Deacons, paving the way for NC players like Chris Paul and Ish Smith years later. I actually spoke with Ish Smith recently in a Hornets on SI exclusive, where he briefly praised Muggsy and echoed my sentiment that Bogues is one of the most underrated players of all time.
After Wake Forest and before the draft, Muggsy was also on the ‘86 Gold Medal-winning Olympic team in Spain at the FIBA World Championship; it was the last full-on collegiate team ever sent to the tournament before NBA players were allowed to compete.
He was drafted 12th overall by the Bullets in 1987, and only played his rookie year before Washington left him unprotected in the ‘88 expansion draft, where Charlotte picked him.
Many speculators questioned it at the time; Charlotte wanted to play fast, though, to help alleviate their talent discrepancies early in year one. Expansion year one is never good for teams, and Bogues helped them win 20 games as he became the team’s starter later in that first season after some injuries created opportunities to start.
It was easily one of the best decisions Charlotte’s ever made, and Bogues still holds countless records for the team, alongside the games played in earlier seasons.
He’s also incredibly active in the Charlotte community and consistently gives back to the city that initially believed in him; the team, Muggsy, and the city of Charlotte share a genuine love for each other.
It was only right that the Hornets went the distance to make sure he was recognized for that in every way. Charlotte will retire Muggsy Bogues No. 1 jersey on February 11th, 2027, when Charlotte matches up against the Milwaukee Bucks at the Spectrum Center.
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