Miles Bridges has his best scoring night, but Hornets crumble in fourth quarter
Miles Bridges has a new career high after he scored 31 points Friday, but the Charlotte Hornets blew a great opportunity on the road.
The Hornets led by as much as 13 points, but couldn’t hold on in a 125-118 loss to the Washington Wizards.
Bridges, a forward in his second season, made 12 of 21 shots from the field. His prior career high was 23. He also had eight rebounds.
The Hornets had a chance for a 2-2 road trip. Instead, they are 6-10 and on a three-game losing streak heading into Saturday’s home game against the Chicago Bulls.
Ten thoughts on Friday’s loss:
▪ Hornets guard Terry Rozier got a big rebound at mid-court late, but then got caught in a crowd of Wizards at the other end and committed a turnover.
▪ As well as Malik Monk has played of late, that 3-pointer in the final minute wasn’t close.
▪ The Wizards kept getting to the rim in the fourth quarter to make up a deficit and lead by four with two minutes left. Marvin Williams was called for back-to-back fouls in Washington’s run, one defensive and one offensive.
▪It took the season’s first 16 games for the Hornets to go the distance once without trailing by double digits. That statistic about deficits says two things: The collective talent on this roster is very fragile, but these players have been resilient.
▪ Devonte Graham filled the first-half box score: 12 points, four assists, four rebounds, two steals and a block. The Hornets outscored the Wizards by 18 points in the 17 minutes Graham played before halftime. He finished with 19 points and seven assists.
▪ Foul trouble has limited Hornets rookie P.J. Washington on this road trip. Pretty common that when a rookie plays as much as Washington has the first 15 games, teams figure out what best to attack defensively. Now, Washington has to catch up to the scouting.
▪ With Nic Batum and Dwayne Bacon both back from injury, Hornets rookie Cody Martin is no longer a fixture in the Hornets rotation. Will he head to a Greensboro Swarm assignment soon?
▪ Before the preseason, Hornets coach James Borrego conceded he needed to change his approach defensively. He tried last season to play the way his former team, the San Antonio Spurs, did -- paying equal attention to the rim and the 3-point line. This season the priority is rim-protection. The Wizards can make an opponent look bad out along the arc: They made 11 of their first 21 3s.
▪ The Hornets entered Friday’s game with the worst rebound-differential in the NBA at minus-5.7 per game. The next-worst is the Bulls at minus-4. They have a negative turnover-ratio, although it’s not bad at 0.2 per game. But those situations combined put huge pressure on them to be efficient offensively since it’s inevitable they will have fewer possessions most games.
▪ Graham’s 3-point shooting this season is catching up to the scouting reports, with teams guarding him more aggressively along the arc. The counter-measure to that is more drives, either to set up the floater he hit early in Friday’s game or to draw extra defenders and feed the big men around him.
