Groundhog Day in March: Another rough night for the Hornets. What else is new?
Leading into the Charlotte Hornets’ latest stop on a seemingly endless parade across the country after the All-Star break, Miles Bridges downplayed their nomadic situation.
The combo forward opted to look at the bright side.
“It’s always tough playing on the road, but I feel like with this specific road trip, we’re getting time off,” Bridges said. “So, we’ve got time to relax after we play. So, I really can’t complain about this road trip because we are getting some time off. But the road trips have been difficult. We are trying to work with as much as we can.”
Right about now, though, the Hornets have essentially run out of fuel and put the hazard lights to navigate pulling over to the shoulder. During Tuesday night’s 112-92 loss to Orlando at KIA Center, which was their 11th defeat in their last 14 games, the Hornets were flatter than a slashed tire, trailing by as many as 41 points.
And get this: it’s about to get even tougher.
“This will be the last time that we get more than one day off for the rest of the season,” coach Steve Clifford said. “We have the most difficult in the NBA schedule left. Thirteen games in 22 nights, so they need rest and obviously we need to stay as in rhythm as we can.”
That’s proven to be rather difficult lately. Already shorthanded with four key rotation players — LaMelo Ball, Mark Williams, Seth Curry and Cody Martin — still sidelined with various injuries, the Hornets are making a habit of this ejection thing.
Three days after rookie Brandon Miller’s first career ejection following a flagrant-2 foul on Philadelphia’s Tyrese Maxey, Davis Bertāns received the same treatment from the officials after elbowing Orlando’s Jalen Suggs in the face.
“I’m not going to comment on it just because I don’t want to get in trouble,” Clifford said. “But those are tough ones and twice tonight he got hit, D.B. That’s all I’m going to say and I told the officials that. But I’m not going to make any public comments on the officiating.”
Mercifully, the Hornets won’t have to worry about much on the court soon. The finish line is rapidly approaching.
“This is the end of this stretch since we have three days off,” Clifford said. “But we are going to take (Wednesday) off. We are in the middle of 14 out of 18 on the road, which has been difficult. Kind of in, out, in out. But the biggest thing for us, is what we’ve been talking about. We want to finish the game, competing every night.”
Clifford insists that’s still happening, but the Hornets certainly didn’t put those words into action against the Magic — a foe that’s leapfrogged Charlotte again over the past few seasons in the Southeast Division pecking order. Calling it a struggle is being kind.
And it’s been this way for a while now.
In four of their past five outings, the Hornets haven’t cracked triple digits in scoring. On three occasions over the last month, they couldn’t even bust out of the 80s. Luckily, Orlando called the dogs off early or it surely would’ve been a fourth game wallowing below 90 points.
Things are that bad for the current cast of Hornets.
“When Seth went down and when Cody went down, we were actually much more competitive,” Clifford said. “After that, let’s be honest, we have very, very little room for error and yet we’ve been in games most every night. So, we are going to play it out.
“We are going to try to win every night. I think that’s the way you grow. I don’t believe in — and we’ve talked about this as an organization — I don’t believe in guys sitting late in the year and things like that. You need to grow.”
Clifford pointed to players’ initial conversation with the Hornets’ new chief decision maker the day he officially got hired.
“The first thing Jeff Peterson said when he came in here was we have 20 games left and we are going to try to win all of them,” Clifford said. “You can’t click a button ‘important vs. unimportant.’ It doesn’t work that way. We may not win a lot of games, but we can win the right way.
“There’s a difference between losing a game and having a losing mentality. There’s a world of difference and we have talked to the guys about that.”
