Boston's Jayson Tatum and the Celtics will practice at The Citadel in October.
File/Frank Franklin II/AP
The NBA is returning to The Citadel – again.
For the fifth straight year, the downtown military school will be hosting NBA preseason camps — this time not one, but two teams in the Charlotte Hornets and Boston Celtics.
The Hornets will be practicing at The Citadel from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2, while the Celtics will work out from Oct. 4-6.
A year ago, the Hornets spent nearly a week at McAlister Field House before facing the defending NBA champions Oklahoma City Thunder at the North Charleston Coliseum. While the Hornets roster for the exhibition game featured all of their key players, including LaMelo Ball. The Thunder, however, left several of their most famous players in Oklahoma, including league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for the preseason game.
There is no exhibition game scheduled for this trip.
The Hornets, who were led by Brandon Miller's 20 points a game average, were 44-38 last season and were a part of the NBA’s play-in tournament during the postseason.
Led by perennial NBA All-Star Jayson Tatum, the Celtics went 56-26 last season but were bounced out of the playoffs by the Philadelphia 76ers.
The Celtics roster will look vastly different without forward Jaylen Brown, who was traded to Philadelphia this summer for nine-time All-Star Paul George, a 2028 first-round pick (via Clippers), a 2031 first-round pick, and two second-round picks (2028, 2030).
Despite Charleston being more than 200 miles from the closest NFL, NBA or NHL franchise, the Hornets are one of several professional franchises that have come to the Holy City in recent years, not only for its history and food scene, but for practices and team bonding as well.
The Philadelphia 76ers (2022) and the New York Knicks (2023, 2024) practiced at The Citadel in preparation for the regular season.
The NBA isn’t the only professional sports league to use Charleston as a training base.
The NHL’s St. Louis Blues worked at the Carolina Ice Palace and North Charleston Coliseum twice — once in 2013, then again in 2022.
In 2008, the Phoenix Coyotes, coached by Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky, spent two days in the Lowcountry while Super Bowl XLII was being held in Arizona.
The Buffalo Sabres held their preseason camp in the Lowcountry in the early 2000s.
In the 1990s with Pat Riley as their head coach, the Knicks would come to the Lowcountry — practicing at College of Charleston — for part of their preseason camp.
In 2012, the then-Charlotte Bobcats faced the New Orleans Hornets — a game that featured No. 1 overall pick, and future NBA champion, Anthony Davis against Charlotte’s Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, the second pick in the draft.
In 2009, the Bobcats played the Cleveland Cavaliers, whose roster featured LeBron James and Shaquille O'Neal.
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