CHARLOTTE (CAROLINA SPORTS LIVE) — It was the moment every basketball player dreams about.
“The picks kept going,” recalls Rex Chapman, now 57. “After the 7th pick, my agent David Falk said, ‘You’re going next.’”
In this instance, Chapman should have been excited. But now looking back, he admits he was plain confused.
“Charlotte was not one of the teams that been to (for predraft workouts),” he explained. “I was not sure I knew even Charlotte was… (one of the expansion teams.)”
We can forgive him. After all, 1988 was a very different time.
Back then, the Hornets were just entering their first year in the league, and with their first-ever NBA Draft pick, they took a kid from Kentucky who was just learning of their existence.
“I didn’t really understand,” Chapman, who played for the Hornets from 1988 until 1992, admits. “You know, the first NBA game I saw, I played in!”
It was all uncharted territory. Even the team’s uniforms had this former McDonald’s All-American feeling out of his element.
“They had pleats in the shorts and the shorts were so short,” he says. “I wore them during a photo shoot or something. I was like, ‘I can’t do this.”
But the one thing Chapman could relate to was basketball, and it didn’t take him long to appreciate the opportunity that was in front of him.
“We had some great, great veteran teammates that were with me that really kind of helped raise me.”
All things considered, it turned out pretty well.
“Just young and kind of dumb and winging it,” he smiles.
He’s a history maker, alright.
One who now knows where Charlotte is on the map, because after all, he helped put it there.