No more excuses for the Charlotte Hornets. It’s time to win — and suddenly they are
The Charlotte Hornets — or at least some of their fans — always seem to have a ready-made excuse for whatever misfortune befalls the team.
It traditionally boils down to “But we’re not healthy!”
Brandon Miller is hurt. Or LaMelo Ball. Or Mark Williams. Or somebody else. For years — certainly since Ball arrived on the scene in 2020 — the noise around the Hornets would make you believe this is the only franchise in the NBA that sustains injuries with any regularity.
That isn’t anywhere close to true in a physical league with a way-too-long regular season.
For instance, the Hornets won for the fourth time in their past five games Monday, in a matinee on the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, by edging Dallas, 110-105, at the Spectrum Center. During the game, the Mavericks were missing one of the top five players in the NBA in Luka Dončić, as well as five other players who had injuries.
The Hornets were missing Miller, whose torn ligament in his right wrist has him out indefinitely (and potentially for the rest of the season), as well as several other players. It was unfortunate for Miller, given this was also his bobblehead day.
But you know what?
It’s not at all unusual.
You play with who you’ve got. You must win with who you’ve got. The best teams don’t get derailed when a starter or two goes down. Dončić has missed 13 games in a row for Dallas with a left calf strain, and the Mavericks are still 23-20 and were No. 7 in the Western Conference entering the game.
And while the Hornets (11-28) have had a terrible first half of the season, a few positive signs have emerged. They have gone 4-1 over their past five games by playing the way you should.
The Hornets are suddenly chasing down 50-50 balls. Melo, an offensive savant who played defense only when he felt like it during his first four seasons, is actually trying to draw charges. Overall hustle is up.
“We’re learning how to win,” said Hornets forward Miles Bridges, who tied Ball for a team-high in points Monday with 23.
That this is all happening in the bottom third of the NBA, where lottery teams like Charlotte play games that “Inside the NBA” treats as afterthoughts, means that a lot of people around the league aren’t noticing. But if this turns out to be a trend rather than a statistical anomaly, they eventually will.
Let’s look a little deeper at the injury statistics around the NBA.
According to Spotrac, the Hornets are tied for sixth in the NBA in “games missed due to injury” this season. That’s not good, but Brooklyn, Memphis, New Orleans, Oklahoma City and the L.A. Lakers all have had more. Some of them have had way more.
So while the Hornets have had their share of injuries, Oklahoma City, to give just one example, has technically had more “games missed due to injury.” Oklahoma City was also 35-7 as of Monday and No. 1 in the Western Conference by a mile. It can be done.
And the Hornets, after a half-season of futility, are currently doing it. They don’t have Oklahoma City’s roster — that’s a lot of the problem — and they are about to miss the playoffs for a ninth straight year (longest active streak in the NBA). But at least you can see they’re trying.
“I was very happy with the level of physicality our whole squad had,” Charles Lee, the Hornets’ first-year coach, said Monday.
What was also heartening Monday was the crowd.
The Spectrum Center was sold out, with 19,314 fans braving the cold in Charlotte to show up. Some were there to see Luka, of course, and went home disappointed because he’s hurt. But there were also a whole lot of happy Hornets fans who saw Charlotte gut out a win despite shooting only 40.8%.
“I actually feel like the crowd has been great all year,” Lee said.
I would tend to agree. This was the Hornets’ eighth sellout of the season.
Does a team that went into this game having won only 10 games — tied for second-worst in the NBA before tipoff — really “deserve” all those sellouts?
Probably not. But it just goes to show you that 1) the NBA is very popular and 2) this city is aching for a winner.
The crowd on Monday pulsed with energy. It acted like catching a free T-shirt was a million-dollar lottery ticket (if I controlled in-game entertainment, I’d throw out free T-shirts eight times a game. Nothing gives you more bang for the buck).
And when Bridges had a monstrous putback dunk to tie the game at 102-all, the place nearly lifted off the ground. At 108-105, when Klay Thompson missed a 3-point attempt for Dallas that would have probably sent the game to overtime with 3.3 seconds left, the fans yelled in relief and exultation.
Those are the sorts of moments the Hornets haven’t had nearly enough of since 2016, the last time the team made the NBA playoffs. Those are the kinds of moments you get if your best player actually plays defense, and pulls the rest of the team along with him.
Said Bridges of his close friend Ball: “As long as he continues to want to play defense, he’s going to be good at it.”
Agreed Lee: “If you want to win in this league, you have to be able to play both sides of the ball. And he (Ball) is, I think, elevating his mindset. He’s elevating his footprint on that defensive side, which I’m very happy to see. And I think the whole team kind of fuels off of that.”
Now ... can they keep it up?
