With a ‘shout-out to Charles Barkley’, Charlotte Hornets win again at home
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Hornets improve to 31-31 after win over Dallas, their 5th straight victory.
- The Hornets are 15-3 over their last 18 games; bench supplied a big boost in this one.
- Spectrum Center sellouts (15 this season) and growing buzz reflect rising expectations.
The number 31 is pretty cool, as numbers go. It’s a prime number. It’s the atomic number for gallium, the silvery metal that melts in your hand. Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors.
The Charlotte Hornets think 31 is pretty cool, too. With their 117-90 blowout win over Dallas Tuesday night, their overall record became 31-31.
The climb has taken 126 days, but the Hornets have finally gotten themselves back to .500. The last time they were there? When the season was in its infancy and the Hornets were 2-2, on Oct. 28, 2025.
The last time they were at least .500 this late in the season? In 2016, which was also the last time they made the NBA playoffs.
As wild as it seems, it’s now routine for the Hornets to win and somewhat unusual when they don’t. They are 15-3 over their last 18 games, making up all of the ground they ceded back when they were 16-28 and looking like the same ol’, same ol’ Hornets.
But this is a newer, sleeker version. A weak team like Dallas (21-40), which was playing without Rookie of the Year candidate Cooper Flagg, is no match for it. A strong team like Boston — the Hornets play on the road against the Celtics Wednesday night — will certainly be favored against the Hornets. But even that’s not a sure loss for Charlotte anymore.
The players have believed for a while. But the outside world?
“Everyone’s shocked,” said Grant Williams, who grew up in Charlotte and had 12 points off the bench Tuesday. “You know, the Charlotte Hornets: Who would have thought?... We’re exciting to go watch. And I think (people) are starting to tune in now — shout-out to Charles Barkley.”
NBA legend Barkley has made a recurring bit out of being the conductor of the Hornets’ hype train on TV, but more and more people are hopping on that train these days.
What’s also become fairly routine in Charlotte is a sellout crowd to watch the Hornets. The game against Dallas was the Hornets’ 15th sellout of the season, as a crowd of 19,519 found its way to Spectrum Center on a random Tuesday night in March.
They didn’t get the Flagg-Kon Knueppel showdown many had undoubtedly hoped for, due to Flagg’s midfoot sprain that kept him sidelined as he was for most of February.
But they did get the Hornets winning with little problem. And they got Red Panda, the NBA’s all-time best halftime show, doing her ageless unicycle-and-bowl-flipping trick at halftime.
The fans even got eight free Chick-Fil-A free chicken nuggets due to Caleb Martin missing two straight fourth-quarter free throws, which drew one of the evening’s biggest cheers. It was another good night for the Hornets, in what has been a 2026 full of them.
Another oddity Tuesday: Dallas guard Max Christie shot the worst wide-open 3-pointer I can remember seeing in person by an NBA player.
Christie, who is shooting 41.9% from 3-point range this season, was left open in the left corner and had time to eat his lunch if he wanted to before launching. He held his follow-through — and watched the ball hit the top left corner of the backboard and bounce about 10 feet away. The Hornets’ broadcast team of Eric Collins and Dell Curry had a lot of fun with that one.
As for Knueppel, rapidly gaining on Flagg in the NBA Rookie of the Year race, he had a below-average night shooting (1-for-7 from 3-point range). But Knueppel still worked his way to 13 points on a balanced evening when the Hornets didn’t have a single player score 20 or more points but placed eight players in double figures.
“We’re seeing the fruits of our labor,” Hornets coach Charles Lee said.
The Hornets are now 19-2 when they start Knueppel, Miles Bridges, Moussa Diabate, Brandon Miller and LaMelo Ball. But this game was more or less won by the bench, which had 12 of the Hornets’ 20 made 3-pointers (Dallas only made three).
Reserves like Josh Green (plus-36) and Sion James (plus-30) had eye-popping plus-minus numbers, while LaMelo Ball (who shot 5-for-19) was a minus-5.
That’s what you want: the ability to win in all sorts of ways.
Many tests await. The Hornets have 20 more regular-season games, plus whatever the play-in tournament or the real postseason may hold. But Tuesday was another step, as the Hornets found their way to .500 and sent another home crowd home happy.
Miller had a bit of a prediction postgame. “As long as we keep piling these wins,” he said, “we will probably be way over .500.”
