Ending on a sour note. What we learned in the Hornets’ New Year’s Eve loss to Brooklyn
With all the craziness and disappointment that’s engulfed the Charlotte Hornets during the past eight months, the end probably couldn’t come quickly enough.
Flipping the calendar from 2022 is a way to temporarily forget their troubles and look ahead to the future, allowing the team to ponder the upcoming possibilities. The Hornets’ present is shot, done before the season’s halfway point, and Brooklyn became the latest opponent to pick them apart.
So the Hornets go into the new year still searching for relevancy, a task that becomes more difficult with each defeat. In falling to the Nets 123-106 at Spectrum Center on Saturday night and continuing their seemingly inevitable beeline toward the draft lottery, the Hornets showed just how far the current gap is between them and the upper crust of the Eastern Conference.
“Right now, they’re the best team in the NBA,” coach Steve Clifford said of the Nets. “They’re playing better than anybody else. They’re playing well at both ends of the floor.”
That’s not the case for the Hornets (10-27). They’re having trouble putting a complete effort together consistently and the issue arose once more against Brooklyn, which led wire-to-wire.
“We got great shots against a good team,” Terry Rozier said. “It’s just our defense. We’ve got to keep cleaning up our defense.”
Here are some key takeaways from the Hornets’ third loss in their past four games:
Too little, too late
That good touch the Hornets enjoyed 48 hours earlier deserted them, and going ice-cold with the likes of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving on the other side is a disastrous proposition.
Done in partially by a rough shooting display, the Hornets connected on 39.6% of their attempts and looked nothing like the team that nailed a season-best 54.8% in the opener of its four-game homestand. Starting out 2 for 19 from 3-point range -- with Rozier and LaMelo Ball going a combined 2 fore 10 -- and sinking just 11.1% beyond the arc in the first half put Charlotte in a hole as large as 17 points.
The Hornets are simply not good enough to climb out of that kind of deficit, especially when their highest-paid player Gordon Hayward mustered two points 1 of 7 shooting in 29 minutes.
“I just think you’ve got to understand that some nights it’s going to happen,” Clifford said. “Look, part of it is we have some really good offensive players who aren’t shooting the ball well right now. They’ll turn it around. We’re getting good shots.
“With Melo and Gordon back, it’s much different than it was before. We’re now consistently creating good shots. I think that’ll help guys get back into rhythm and when we do that, that will help.”
Lonely LaMelo streaking
Besides Mason Plumlee, who tossed in a season high 22 points to go with 10 rebounds, Ball was the only one who showed an effective pulse offensively. Although he couldn’t completely ignite the Hornets, he tossed in 23 points to go with 11 assists and seven rebounds.
Ball has now recorded 12 straight games with multiple 3-pointers, increasing the longest streak of his career. The 21-year-old joined Charlotte native and Golden State star Stephen Curry, Philadelphia’s James Harden and Toronto’s Fred VanVleet as the only players in NBA history to hit at least four 3-pointers in nine consecutive games.
“I was just talking to him in the locker room,” Plumlee said. “For the time I’ve been here, I feel like he’s playing as well as he’s played, in terms of getting other people involved. Tonight to see him attacking the basket, shooting free throws … I’d love for him to be one of those guys shooting 8-10 free throws a game.
“But obviously our pace has jumped. Coach spoke to that this morning, but he’s playing at a high level.”
Oubre not OK
Don’t expect to see Kelly Oubre again before the Hornets hit the road at the end of the week. He’s hurting a bit and the soreness isn’t going away.
Oubre missed his second game of the season, sitting out against the Nets with a sprained left hand that’s apparently bothered him for a while. The Hornets are trying to devise a plan that will allow him to recover so the pain subsides and doesn’t linger.
“He’s working, doing as much as he can now to try and get back,” Clifford said. “Hopefully we’ll know more in the next couple of days. The hand is funny, it just got banged a bunch of times, and this was twice in a short period of time. It was really sore. You could see he was struggling to catch the ball. He definitely needs time for sure.”
In the meantime the Hornets will have to rely on others like Jalen McDaniels, who’s resuming his sixth-man role, to assist in filling the void left by Oubre’s absence. Same goes for JT Thor, who’s struggling with his confidence and has misfired on six of his last seven attempts and made only four of his past 11 shots.
Oubre’s 20.2 points per game are second behind Ball and his ability to be effective in the starting lineup or off the bench makes him invaluable at times. That’s not easy to replace.
“Everybody’s got to do a little bit more,” Clifford said.
This story was originally published December 31, 2022 at 9:34 PM.
