Terry Rozier thinks Charlotte Hornets can be a ‘sleeper’ in 2022-23
There was extra pep in their steps. New sneakers seemed to squeak just a bit louder. Bouncing balls had a twinge of added gusto and the sound of shots sinking through the nets echoed throughout a cavernous arena.
After a long offseason filled with more than its share of peaks and valleys, some of which is still unfolding, the Charlotte Hornets are primed and eager for Wednesday’s opener against the San Antonio Spurs. Their time has arrived.
“You could sense it today with the guys,” coach Steve Clifford said. “You could tell. ... As a coach, sometimes you like practice obviously a lot more than the players do. You could tell guys are excited, and we’ve had a good stretch here of four or five days since the last time we played. I think the attitude (and) the progress we’ve made has been good. And we’ll see where we are at.”
Although the Hornets are tipping off without LaMelo Ball as their injured All-Star point guard nurses a sprained left ankle, the team’s enthusiasm was evident as they prepared to open the season at the AT&T Center in San Antonio. Finally, it all matters again.
“Really excited,” Gordon Hayward said. “I always get that excited type of feeling at the beginning of a new season. It’s a fresh slate for us and it’s been since February for me, and April for the team. So I think we are ready to get it going.”
No more exhibitions. Experimentation is finished, too.
“Everything counts,” Kelly Oubre said. “It’s the beginning of the journey in the standings and everything like that. So we’ve just got to carry over everything that we’ve learned in training camp and preseason into the regular season.”
There’s still a learning phase for the Hornets and it could take a while to sort things out. Due to the unavailability of some of their key players at times during the preseason – like Ball, Hayward and Cody Martin – Clifford never had much of an opportunity to get a true gander at certain rotations and specific lineup combinations he may want to test against the opposition.
It’s not necessarily a setback. But it makes it a challenge to gauge what works best. That’s why Clifford may go 10 players deep in the early going – even if it’s not typically part of his philosophy.
“Look, I’m a believer in playing nine. And when you play nine, by the way, you take a lot of heat a lot of times,” Clifford said. “But when you play nine, what does happen is they all get enough minutes to play. I strongly believe in that. But a lot of times because of injuries or whatever, the situation dictates that you play 10. And that’s where we are at right now, so that’s what we are going to do.”
Kicking things off with a noteworthy defensive effort could provide a solid mental boost for a team that struggled mightily on that side of the ball during the past few seasons. Fixing a leaky defense that was among the league’s worst in 2021-22 is one of the chief items on the Hornets’ to-do list. It’s a multi-layered task that can have additional ramifications if not properly executed.
Improving transition defense from a season ago is critical. Same goes with keeping the opposition out of the paint. That’s paramount and must begin on the perimeter with the guards and wing players. It can’t strictly be on the centers to anchor the interior because breakdowns cause a negative chain reaction. Free-throw differential becomes a problem. The quality of spot up 3-pointers the opposition gets are also byproducts of drives into the lane.
The Hornets also must juggle Clifford’s defensive edict while crashing the glass on the offensive end, which won’t be an easy thing to master immediately.
“We want to score second-chance points and get back on defense,” Clifford said. “So that is a challenging thing to do. And actually if I didn’t think that scoring second-chance points for our team is important, you could just get back. We have to do both. That’s what I told the guys this morning. That’s what we are going to do. We’ve got to get to the point where we can do both.”
Clifford won’t get an argument from Oubre. There’s no debating the gravity of the strategy.
“It’s very important,” Oubre said. “We are one of those teams right now that’s still trying to find our identity, build our culture and our style of play. And coach Clifford has done an amazing job of repping out the most basics and details and fundamentals that we need. So early communication, playing free and playing with energy and playing to make your teammate better. That’s the main takeaways.
“But just playing in detail, not just playing like chickens with our heads cut off like we’ve been doing in the past. So adding some structure here will be amazing and coach Clifford brings all of that stuff. It’s up to us to go do it.”
That’s exactly what Terry Rozier thinks the Hornets are poised for during the coming weeks.
“I’m super focused, super locked in,” Rozier said. “This is the best I’ve ever felt and I’m just trying to pass how I feel on to the next guy And hopefully it becomes contagious. Our energy is high, everybody feels good and every team feels good at the beginning of the season. We want to be one of those sleepers. Every year, the NBA has sleepers and we want to be one of those teams.
“And I know we can do it. We’ve got more than enough talent and more than enough gritty guys. So it’s going to be an exciting year.”
Oddsmakers don’t share that same level of warmth for the Hornets, though. Most don’t expect them to even come close to last season’s 43-win total.
The chatter doesn’t go unnoticed and serves as a burning fuel for some.
“Yes, but we don’t talk about that,” Oubre said. “It’s one of the unspokens because they are not in our locker room. They are not putting in the same work that we are putting in each and every day right now. They are not doing the things that we are doing.
“So we’ve just got to stay close in the locker room, just continue to push each other so that we can shut those people up who don’t think anything is good. That’s just what it is. We’ve got to continue to focus on us.”
This story was originally published October 19, 2022 at 3:24 PM.
