Let's hope the leaked Charlotte Hornets City Edition jerseys are not real

The Charlotte Hornets have mostly focused on mint as the theme for their City Edition jerseys across the years, either using mint coloring or gold to signify the city. In 2025-26, it looks like they're ditching that approach entirely.

If these leaks are to be believed, which I hope they're not, then the Hornets are going to have orange jerseys. They have the best color scheme, teal and purple, in the entire NBA, and they're ditching it for one of the worst jersey colors out there. Orange has hardly ever looked good, and it doesn't here.

The orange jerseys with yellow gradient are bad enough, but the juxtaposition of the blue logo, number, and city name makes it even worse. Those colors don't really go well together. They also don't fit with a general theme. The Hornets might be going for a honeycomb style, but keeping the blue for the rest of it doesn't match.

They might be honoring the Bobcats era (as if that had anything worth honoring), but if they are, why do they have the throwback Hornets logo on the jersey? The font is nice, at least. Otherwise, these are positioned to be among the worst in the association this year.

It's unclear how a 2K modder got a hold of the actual jerseys to make a version of them in the game, so maybe this is just someone having fun with their own design and playing it off like a leak. There is currently no other source for the jerseys, and it's hard to buy a video game mod as a reputable source. At least, that's the idea I'm clinging to until these get announced.

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