The Hornets are finally at full strength. That won’t matter if they don’t fix this issue.
The return of their star point guard and leading scorer was supposed to give them an extra lift. Add a pogo-stick like bounce to their step. Tilt things more in their direction.
Instead, the Charlotte Hornets’ fate in the Pacific Northwest mirrored the much of the putrid performance they thought they left buried in Dallas four days prior. You know, the stench purportedly erased by a convincing victory in San Antonio sandwiched in between Friday night’s contest against Portland. But being whole for the first time in two weeks wasn’t nearly enough to keep the Hornets from getting mashed by the Trail Blazers 125-116 at the Moda Center.
Maybe they thought just because they were facing a team seemingly in shambles and in the midst of a seven-game losing streak that it wasn’t going to be overly difficult. Perhaps that relatively breezy win over Portland on Halloween some 2,800 miles away from here remained etched in their brains. Or, hey, they assumed Damian Lillard’s struggles were about to continue and he, uh, torched them for a season-best 43 points.
How else can you explain allowing 81 first-half points and falling behind by 29?
“We can have all our players back in the world, but if we come out lackadaisical anybody can beat us,” Miles Bridges said. “They just came off losing, what, 10 out of 11? You can’t play like that against anybody, especially when they’ve got a player like Dame who can go off for 43. So we can’t wait until we get down 25, 30 to start playing with pride. And that’s what we did today. We waited too late.”
Defensive breakdowns were a killer, something that’s been a thorny issue for the Hornets (16-15) all season. Portland maneuvered to get off just about any shot it wanted, yielding record-breaking results – a common theme with Charlotte’s opponents.
Open shots. Easy swooping drives into the lane. Lillard’s first dunk of the season. All that, letting Portland come within two points of breaking the franchise record for most points scored in the first half and watching Ben McLemore go off wasn’t exactly ideal. McLemore’s six 3-pointers in the second quarter were one shy of the Trail Blazers’ franchise record held by Lillard, continuing a troublesome trend of opposing role players roasting the Hornets.
“There were a number of the Blazers guys we tried to run off the 3-point line and we didn’t execute that,” coach James Borrego said. “So it’s gameplan discipline and we’ve got to be better there. Our overall effort was not there and not at the level we needed it to be, in order to affect a team like this. That was a desperate team out there. You could feel their desperation and I’m not sure we matched their desperation.”
When the opponent nails 64.4% of its shots during the game’s initial 24 minutes and drains 64.4% from 3-point range, many of them while wide-open, that’s an indictment on the Hornets’ want-to. Same goes for allowing Portland to hit a franchise-record 16 first-half 3-pointers.
“Pretty much got to lock-in on defense,” said LaMelo Ball, who led them with 27 points, five assists and four rebounds. “Coming in ready, come in with high intensity and some energy.”
In essence, that means correcting the concerns they’ve been plagued by all season. Such as closing out possessions. Limiting second-chance points. Eliminating the leaks in the middle to cut down dramatically on points in the paint.
They rank in the league’s bottom three in each of those categories.
“We’re not playing with pride,” Bridges said. “We are getting scored on. Nobody is getting mad at getting scored on. We’re just worrying about the offense right now. I feel that if we put our main focus on defense, then offense will come. What are we, No.. 2 two in offense. No. 3? Our offense is there. We just got to focus on defense.”
They have no choice. Ranked dead last in the league in defensive rating at 114.3, it’s beyond imperative for the Hornets to tighten up things on that side of the ball. Outscoring the opposition is the name of the game, but when the postseason rolls around and the possessions become more of a grind, the team that digs in better defensively has a better chance at grabbing the upper hand.
Right now, there appears to be a hole or two in the Hornets’ beliefs.
“Just not trusting it, not trusting the defense,” Bridges said. “We got to start off games more physical. We let everybody come in comfortable. We let Dame come off screens, shoot the ball freely. We can’t do that against the Suns.They got CP3 (Chris Paul), who is one of the best pick-and-roll players to ever play the game. So if we come out like that against them, it’s going to be the same result. We just got to continue to get better, and come out physical and play hard.”
Not doing it against Portland after waiting so long to return to full strength is unacceptable. And they know it.
“I mean, there’s no excuses,” Bridges said. “There’s no excuses. We’ve got to go out and play hard all the time. We’ve got to go out and play hard like we didn’t have our players, you know what I’m saying? We were playing hard every game. We gave ourselves a chance every game. And now that we’ve got everybody back, if we play hard like that sky’s the limit for us. So we’ve just got to get back to playing Hornets basketball, playing hard, getting out in transition and having fun.”
This story was originally published December 18, 2021 at 7:00 AM.
