How Charlotte Fans Brought Back the Buzz

On May 20, 2014, after 12 years away, Charlotte got its name back. Nobody handed it over. The fans won it, together.

For four years, thousands of Charlotteans refused to accept that the Hornets were gone for good. They signed a petition nearly 11,700 strong. They wrote letters to Michael Jordan. They packed the upper deck of Bobcats games in teal and purple and chanted "Charlotte Hornets" all the way down to the lobby. Two grassroots campaigns led the way side by side, John Morgan's We Beelieve and Scotty and Evan Kent's Bring Back the Buzz, and an army of fans, friends, families and designers carried it with them. They were up against an owner who had already said no, a front office that kept them at arm's length, and a league that laughed at the idea. They kept going anyway, until the people in charge said yes. Cornwallis called this place a hornet's nest of rebellion in 1780. More than two centuries later, that same stubborn, never-back-down spirit did something no city in American pro sports had ever done: it brought a departed team's name back home.

This is that story, built from the Bring Back the Buzz blog and Twitter account, the petition, the videos fans shot, and the news coverage of the time.

A city that never let go

The name was Charlotte's long before it was a basketball team's. In 1780, as local militia harassed his army at every turn, British general Charles Cornwallis called the town a hornet's nest of rebellion. Charlotte took it as a compliment. For two centuries it wore the hornet with pride, on police patches, on minor league jerseys, and in the way the city sees itself: small enough to be underestimated, stubborn enough to make you regret it.

When the NBA arrived in 1988, Charlotte fell hard. The original Hornets sold out 364 straight home games and led the league in attendance for seven straight seasons at the Charlotte Coliseum, the building fans called the Hive. A generation of kids grew up there in Starter jackets and Alexander Julian pinstripes, many of them, like the Kent brothers, sitting next to their parents.

Then it ended. After a dispute with the city over a new arena, the team moved to New Orleans in 2002 and took the name with it. The NBA came back in 2004 as the Charlotte Bobcats, but for a lot of fans the new name never felt like theirs. Michael Jordan bought the team in 2010, and the Bobcats made their first playoff trip that spring. Two years later they finished 7-59, the worst winning percentage in NBA history.

But the fans who grew up at the Hive were still in Charlotte, and they weren't ready to let go. All they needed was a place to gather.

More than a nickname

To understand why so many people fought so hard for a team name, you have to understand what the name means here.

Charlotte's story as a city of rebels starts in May 1775. When news of the fighting at Lexington and Concord reached the Carolina backcountry, Mecklenburg County's leaders answered with the Mecklenburg Resolves and, by local tradition, a Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence dated May 20, 1775, more than a year before Philadelphia's. Historians still debate the Declaration, but Charlotte never stopped claiming it; the date sits on the North Carolina state flag. One of the men remembered as a signer, Hezekiah Alexander, built a stone house in 1774 that still stands as the oldest in Mecklenburg County, on the grounds of the Charlotte Museum of History (Charlotte Mecklenburg Story).

Five years later, in September 1780, Cornwallis marched in. Outnumbered local militia fought him at the Battle of Charlotte and harassed his army for 16 days, until he left calling the place a hornet's nest of rebellion. No one has ever found that line in his own writing, but Charlotte has never let go of it (WSOC).

Look around the city and the hornet is everywhere:

• The city seal and flag. Charlotte's official seal shows a hornet's nest hanging from a tree, and Mecklenburg County's seal carries one too.
• The police. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department's shield and patrol cars feature a hornet's nest (WBTV).
• The Navy. The submarine USS Charlotte sails under the motto "Silent Stinger," with a seal in the same teal and purple as the city's NBA team (WSOC).
• The Girl Scouts. Charlotte's council is the Hornets' Nest Council. When national leaders tried to change the name, its CEO refused: stir the nest here, she said, and you get the same resistance Cornwallis did.
• Parks, schools and rivalries. Hornets Nest Park, Hornets Nest Elementary, and the Hornets' Nest Trophy that UNC Charlotte and Davidson play for.
• Sports before the NBA. A minor league baseball team carried the Hornets name for most of the 20th century, and a pro football team in the 1970s.

So when the NBA arrived in 1988 and a name-the-team contest chose "Hornets," it wasn't a marketing pick. It was the city naming the team after itself. And when the team left in 2002 and took the name with it, Charlotte didn't just lose a franchise. It lost a piece of its own identity. As Evan put it the day before Jordan's announcement, it was about regaining a piece of Charlotte's heritage (WSOC, 2013).

Mama Buzz and the history lesson

For Scotty and Evan Kent, that history wasn't something they picked up from a plaque. It came from their mother.

The Kents: the family behind Bring Back the Buzz.

Tricia Kent grew up in Pennsylvania, but she made sure her Charlotte-born sons knew exactly where they were from. She studied anthropology, volunteered at the Charlotte Museum of History as a docent at the Hezekiah Alexander House, and worked in Special Collections at UNC Charlotte. History was part of their childhood: the Mecklenburg Declaration, Cornwallis, and the hornet's nest of rebellion were dinner-table stories in the Kent house. So were the Hornets. Their dad, Greg, took the family to games on Thanksgivings, birthdays, and whenever he felt like surprising them.

That's why the brothers cared the way they did. To them, the Hornets name was never just nostalgia for a '90s team. It was their city's identity. "The Hornets weren't just a basketball team," Evan wrote in 2014. "They were my city, my heritage, my history." And it was their mother who taught them what that history was worth.

When they decided to fight for the name, the first person they called was Mom. Her answer, as they remembered it: "If WE are going to do this, WE are going to go all in and give it all we've got." She did. Tricia "Mama Buzz" Kent wrote her own letter to Michael Jordan, proofread their articles, came to every event, and kept an eye on their Twitter account, sometimes texting to ask which one of them had tweeted that. Read more in A Thank You to the Women Behind Bring Back the Buzz.

It was fitting, then, that the Charlotte Hornets name officially came home on May 20, 2014: the anniversary of the Mecklenburg Declaration.

Two campaigns, one voice

We Beelieve came first. In early 2010, after watching the Bobcats' flat playoff exit against Orlando, John Morgan, a Charlotte native and elementary school art teacher, started a Facebook page called "We Beelieve: Charlotte... take back your Hornets!" For two years it was mostly a Hornets historical society, a place to share photos and memories (Charlotte Magazine, 2012).

Bring Back the Buzz started on its own. That same spring, Evan Kent was visiting his brother Scotty in Greensboro, watching the Bobcats on TV, and the two started talking about how the Hive used to feel and whether the Hornets name could bring that back (Axios, 2015). Bring Back the Buzz was founded on February 10, 2011. Neither brother lived in Charlotte at the time: Scotty taught middle school in Greensboro, and Evan was a student at Appalachian State. Scotty's wife, Jax, designed the first logo, splitting the big "B" to hide a 13 for Bobby Phills.

In early 2012 the two efforts found each other. The Bring Back the Buzz blog and Twitter account went live that February, and Morgan and the Kents started working as one campaign under a shared banner, Charlotte Hornets 2.0. ESPN described Bring Back the Buzz as working in tandem with We Beelieve, serving as the campaign's hub beyond Facebook (ESPN, 2012). As the blog put it that year: "Bring Back the Buzz + We Beelieve = Charlotte Hornets 2.0!"

The first blog post set the mission. The Bobcats had said there was no sign fans wanted a new name, citing a study that didn't even include "Hornets" as an option. So the job, the post said, was to show Jordan and the team's executives that Charlotte really wanted this. In April 2012 the Twitter account said it more bluntly: "2 years ago Jordan said he would change the name if thats what the people want. Well Jordan the people have spoken" (post).

"Give us back our Hornets": the petition

On February 22, 2012, John Morgan launched a Change.org petition addressed to "Michael Jordan and the Charlotte B**Cats; David Stern and the NBA" (Change.org). It recalled the Hive and the heartbreak of losing the team, and repeated one line in capital letters: GIVE US BACK OUR HORNETS. The name, it argued, was about "RECLAIMING OUR BIRTHRIGHT," not nostalgia.

The goal was 1,000 signatures. It hit 600 in two days (CLTblog, 2012), 1,000 in six days, and about 6,000 by the end of May. By December it had passed 7,000 (WFAE, 2012), and in April 2013 We Beelieve and Bring Back the Buzz asked fans together to push it toward 11,000. When it closed, nearly 11,700 people had signed.

Alongside it, Bring Back the Buzz collected letters to Jordan from fans of every age: a teenager who remembered one night at the Coliseum, a fan who described the Hornets as "electric," Tricia "Mama Buzz" Kent, and many more. In December 2012 the group asked for more ("VERY IMPORTANT! We need your help!" post) and packaged them into a portfolio making the case for the change. Read a selection in Letters to Jordan.

Off the screen and into the seats

Signatures proved people cared. The organizers wanted the team to see it. Their idea: get as many fans as possible into old Hornets gear, put them together in the cheap seats at a Bobcats game, and recreate the sound of the Coliseum. They called it SWARM Time Warner.

The flyer for the first SWARM, March 30, 2012.

The first one was March 30, 2012, against Denver. About 100 fans in vintage jerseys, snapbacks and Starter jackets filled the upper deck, with bar crawls before and after (watch the video; ESPN counted nearly 200). One of the Kents wore a purple robe and teal sash; Morgan wore a white tuxedo. "We were the loudest people in the arena," Scotty told ESPN; fans watching at home messaged that they could hear the chants on TV. By the final buzzer, a couple hundred people were chanting "Charlotte Hornets" in the arena lobby. Radio and TV calls started the next day.

The first SWARM, March 30, 2012: about 100 fans in Hornets gear chanting at a Bobcats game. Video: North Carolina Rabbit Hole on YouTube.

The second SWARM, at the April 26, 2012 season finale against the Knicks, was smaller. Then, mid-game, Evan showed Morgan a tweet: NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver, in the building that night, had told the Charlotte Observer he expected a conversation with the Bobcats about changing the name. Section 229 stood up and started chanting (Charlotte Magazine, 2012).

SWARM fans in teal and purple in the stands. Photo: Bring Back the Buzz

A packed Fitzgerald's before a 2013 SWARM. Photo: Bring Back the Buzz

The biggest came on January 19, 2013, against Sacramento: a free pregame keg at Fitzgerald's, then several hundred fans in teal and purple in the upper deck, chanting "Charlotte Hornets" through the game, as the Observer reported, and again in the lobby afterward. At least four fans filmed it (video, video, video, video).

Fans chanting "Charlotte Hornets" at the January 19, 2013 SWARM. Video: bluefus7 on YouTube.

The Silent Swarm, April 2013.

The SWARMs stayed loud but respectful, and the organizers made a point of saying they were Bobcats fans too. To close the 2012-13 season, they held a Silent Swarm on April 13, 2013: no coordinated chants, no section takeovers, just fans in teal and purple cheering for the home team, with an after-party at TILT. A year later, at the last Bobcats regular-season home game, SWARM4CHARITY raised money for the Charlotte Rollin' Bobcats wheelchair basketball team. Read more in The Silent Swarm.

Making it look real

Petitions and chants showed what fans wanted. Rollin "BigDub" Garcia showed them what it would look like.

BigDub was a graphic designer and bar owner in New Orleans, a Hornets fan on the other side of the move, who posted as BigDub81 on the Hornets Report. Starting in spring 2012, he created a modernized Hugo, home and away uniforms, a honeycomb court and a secondary logo built on Queen Charlotte's crown, and in January 2013 a full "Charlotte Hornets 2.0" brand portfolio. Bring Back the Buzz posted it as proof the movement was "grassroots but serious."

It worked. The blog later wrote that his designs gave the campaign a professional face, went viral and reached ESPN, and made skeptics start to believe, before the team would publicly engage. Fans made his Hugo the symbol of the movement; some got it tattooed. In November 2013 the account told the team: "U heard the fans @bobcats ....let @bigdub81 design ur Charlotte Hornets" (post). His designs spread so widely that many fans still believe one of them was an official logo. None ever was; the team's 2014 rebrand used its own designs.

What they were up against

If this had been an easy fight, it wouldn't be worth telling. For most of the campaign, the fans were up against an owner who had already said no, a front office that kept them at arm's length, and a commissioner who admitted he laughed at the idea. That's what makes what they accomplished so remarkable.

At his first press conference as owner in 2010, Jordan said the name wasn't changing, pointing to a team study that showed little appetite for a new name; fans noted "Hornets" wasn't even an option, because New Orleans still had it. As the campaign grew in 2012, team president Fred Whitfield talked about deciding whether to keep building the Bobcats brand (WBTV, 2012), put the cost of a change at $3 million or more, and stressed that fans who had backed the Bobcats for nine years would have a big say. Commissioner David Stern later admitted that when Charlotte fans asked for the name back, he laughed at first (ESPN, 2013).

The organizers had no press credentials and no inside access. Some local media mocked the campaign early on. The frustration showed on the Twitter account: it called out the team for crediting a 31% merchandise jump to the Bobcats when the growth was Jordan gear (post), and when the team surveyed fans, it asked whether anyone had to choose between winning and the Hornets: "No, because u can have both" (post).

What the fans never did was turn on their team. Of roughly 400 posts from those years that X still surfaces, about half cheer on the Bobcats themselves. The account was fair when fairness was due (while another team still held the name, "MJ can do nothing" post), and gracious once the team came around. Years later the blog summed up the whole fight in one line: the fans "forced, what felt like kicking and screaming, this organization into giving back our name." They did it while still showing up for every game.

The door opens

In April 2012, Saints owner Tom Benson agreed to buy the New Orleans team and said he wanted a name tied to Louisiana. The pipe dream suddenly had a path. On December 4, 2012, news broke that New Orleans could drop "Hornets" as soon as the next season. The next day, Bring Back the Buzz posted "Our Turn Charlotte!", calling fans off their computers and onto the streets one more time (Our Turn, Charlotte!). WBTV ran an interview with the headline "Let Jordan know there is no other option" (post).

The January 19 SWARM came days before the official word. On January 23, 2013, the Bobcats emailed season ticket holders a Harris Interactive survey about a possible name change; Bring Back the Buzz confirmed with the team that new season ticket holders could take part and urged fans to weigh in. On January 24, New Orleans announced it would become the Pelicans, Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx publicly backed the Hornets name, and the Bobcats said only that they were doing their due diligence and would have no further comment. A short documentary on the movement, "We BEElieve!", came out the same month. In February, the New York Times interviewed Scotty and Evan for a national story on Charlotte fans who wanted the buzz back.

At a season ticket holder town hall that April, Adam Silver said a change would take about 18 months, and fans in the room came away convinced the league was on board. Silver even posed with a We Beelieve sign. The team said no decision had been made; fans counted "patience" at least 10 times that night. The Twitter account was "Cracking the Jordan Code" as "the last clues are falling into place" (post).

"Let's bring the buzz back"

On the evening of May 21, 2013, before the Draft Lottery, Michael Jordan stepped to the podium at Time Warner Cable Arena and announced the team would apply to become the Charlotte Hornets. Behind him, the screens glowed with three words: "Back the Buzz." To everyone who had spent years signing, tweeting, writing and chanting under the name Bring Back the Buzz, there was no mistaking where those words came from. "Let's bring the buzz back," Jordan told the crowd (WBTV/AP). The same slogan was printed on teal and purple shirts handed out in the arena (WFAE, 2013).

More than a hundred fans were in the building, many of them SWARM regulars, and for them it was the moment four years of work came true. John Morgan told ESPN it felt like walking on a cloud (ESPN, 2013). Scotty called it the "I told you so" moment they'd been waiting for (WBTV, 2013).

The movement answered with humility. The next day, when a fan credited Bring Back the Buzz, the account replied that the group wasn't responsible; Jordan, Benson and Charlotte were (post). Then it told fans to put their money where their buzz was and buy season tickets. They did: about a million dollars in season tickets sold the day of the announcement, the account noted (post).

On July 18, 2013, NBA owners approved the change unanimously (SI, 2013). In the team's statement, Jordan said fans' passion for the change had been unmatched. About 2,000 season ticket holders celebrated downtown with Muggsy Bogues, Rex Chapman, Dell Curry, Kendall Gill and Kelly Tripucka. In November the team confirmed teal and purple would return, after a fan poll showed 80% wanted them back, and in December Jordan unveiled the new logo at halftime and confirmed Hugo's return.

The crown logo Bring Back the Buzz adopted in 2014.

The movement's words didn't stop at the podium. The team built its whole 2013 marketing push around "Back the Buzz": billboards, TV and radio ads, a full-page letter from Jordan in the Observer, a "Back the Buzz" ticket campaign. Then, in early 2014, the NBA raised a problem with the Bring Back the Buzz brand, the very group whose name the slogan echoed, and who had been using it first. The Bobcats stepped in on the group's behalf, and the fans did what they'd done all along: adapted and kept going. Bring Back the Buzz swapped its Hugo for a crown, trademarked its name, and chose to stay independent as the voice of the fans (How Bring Back the Buzz Got Its Crown).

The last Bobcats season turned out to be a good one. The account cheered every win, defended the team against national critics, and by April said it now went into games "expecting to win" (post). Before the final home game it wrote: "Tonight is either the last @Bobcats game ever or our first Playoff victory! Thank You!" (post). After the last possession, it noted the fans who stayed to give the Bobcats a standing ovation.

Homecoming

On May 20, 2014, the Charlotte Hornets name officially came home, on the anniversary of the 1775 Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. In the team's announcement, Jordan called fans "the driving force behind the Hornets name returning" (NBA.com). The history came back too: working with the NBA and the Pelicans, Charlotte reclaimed the records of the original 1988-2002 Hornets (ESPN, 2014). The team said 90% of season ticket holders had renewed and it led the league in new season ticket sales.

Two days earlier, the account had thanked followers for years of listening to "us rant" about why the Hornets mattered (post). On the day itself, after four years of pushing the front office, it posted: "Had a nice convo with Fred Whitfield. Extremely nice guy!" (post).

That fall, a week before the first game back, Evan wrote that the Kents were going to a Charlotte Hornets game as a family again (We Are Charlotte Hornets). On October 29, 2014, Kemba Walker forced overtime with a three and won it against the Bucks. Three days later, Bobby Phills' #13, which had gone to New Orleans with the team, was raised again in Charlotte, something Bring Back the Buzz had petitioned for (Bobby Phills, #13).

Why it worked, and what it left behind

Looking back, a handful of things turned a long shot into a win:

1. Two groups, one voice. We Beelieve and Bring Back the Buzz could have competed. Instead they worked in tandem as Charlotte Hornets 2.0, combining a petition, a blog, social media and events into one campaign.
2. Proof, not just passion. Nearly 11,700 signatures, letters, polls, ticket sales and an Observer poll where close to 85% wanted the Hornets back gave the team numbers it couldn't ignore.
3. Off the screen, into the seats. The SWARMs put the movement in front of the team, the league and TV cameras, and BigDub's designs gave it a face people could picture.
4. Persistence without hostility. The organizers bought tickets, cheered for the Bobcats, and kept the SWARMs positive, while making it clear they weren't going away.
5. A story bigger than nostalgia. The campaign rooted the name in Charlotte's Revolutionary War history and in families passing teal and purple between generations. As Bring Back the Buzz put it in 2013: "This is a family issue."

The team didn't lead this change. Charlotte did. Thousands of fans, two grassroots campaigns and a handful of friends with a website, a Facebook page and a closet full of teal and purple took on an NBA franchise and a skeptical league, and won. They did it the right way, they did it together, and they didn't stop until the people in charge said yes.

It had never been done before. When other cities lost teams, the names left with them or stayed behind with no team to wear them; Cleveland kept the Browns name when its team moved, but Charlotte had already lost the Hornets, and it won them back. Charlotte Magazine noted in 2012 that no other major league city had lured a departed franchise's name home. On the day the change became official, even the team called it "a task that has never been accomplished before" (theScore, 2014).

That's the hornet's nest of rebellion, still at work 234 years after Cornwallis named it. The fans who refused to let go of the Hornets were doing exactly what Charlotte has always done: getting underestimated, digging in, and winning anyway.

After 2014, Bring Back the Buzz turned to building fan culture: Play Charlotte, watch parties, charity events and a blog full of Hornets history. In July 2013 its Twitter account had already written that it wanted a "Hornets Fan Mob," a supporter group like the Seattle Sounders have (post). In 2021 that idea became The Crown Club CLT, the independent fan union for the Charlotte Hornets: TEALgates at The Local before every home game, away trip takeovers, and a member community grown from the same energy that filled section 229 in 2012. The relationship with the team has come a long way, too. In December 2025, the Crown Club teamed up with the Hornets on group tickets.

In the news

The coverage that carried the movement from a Facebook page to a national story, oldest first.

The people behind it

• John Morgan, who started We Beelieve and the petition
• Scotty and Evan Kent, who started Bring Back the Buzz
• Jax Kent, who designed the first Bring Back the Buzz logo, and Tricia "Mama Buzz" and Greg "Papa Buzz" Kent
• Steve Kwon, who wrote the blog's first post and helped run the site
• Greg Jones, who designed the We Beelieve logo and the Hugo posters
• Rollin "BigDub" Garcia, whose concept art gave the movement its look
• And nearly 11,700 petition signers, dozens of letter writers, and every fan who wore teal and purple to a Bobcats game

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