The Charlotte Hornets are dreadful defensively

The Charlotte Hornets won’t show they care about winning until they show they care about defense.

It’s been a while since that happened.

They dropped their fifth in a row Wednesday to the Phoenix Suns 111-102. That’s the longest active losing streak in the Eastern Conference. They are allowing 111.4 points per game in those losses.

Hypothetically, you could say these losses reflect the quality of competition. They did fall to the Toronto Raptors, Oklahoma City Thunder and Golden State Warriors, three of the most dangerous offensive teams in the NBA.

But think about the Suns. Not only had they lost nine in a row entering this game but in two of their last four games the Suns had failed to reach 80 points. They were blown out by 20 by the pitiful Los Angeles Lakers in their last game.

The Suns were so mentally squashed coming into this game that coach Jeff Hornacek brought the players to a bowling alley to blow off steam Tuesday rather than practice.

In the terminology of bowling, no Sun had a gutter ball in Wednesday’s game: Phoenix shot 19-of-33 from 3-point range and 41-of-84 from the field.

The Hornets are simply awful defensively right now and their coach made no attempt to sugar-coat that reality post-game.

"Our energy is fine, but we don’t think about defense. We don’t think about defense to start the game. We think about scoring," Clifford assessed.

"I don’t care if it’s the NBA or not, you’re not going to play with the effort they’re giving defensively. You can’t get rung up the way we did like tonight.

"A lot of it is just one-on-one. You don’t have to make a stop, but you have to make it hard (to score) so we can help."

It was obvious Clifford’s comments above applied to Jeremy Lamb. He entered this game with a sore wrist and hip suffered against the Warriors. But Lamb played all of seven minutes – none in the second half – and Clifford said health had nothing to do with the decision not to use Lamb.

Instead, Clifford reached deep into his bench Wednesday, playing Troy Daniels. He scored 13 points in 23 minutes, making 5-of-9 shots from the field.

When did all this defensive erosion start?

"We played really good defense in both the Lakers and Memphis games" just before the losing streak started, Clifford said. "Whether we’ve got guys worn out right now or whatever.

"Obviously playing without Nic (Batum) is tough – he’s a good team defender and very athletic. But we care about offense right now. When you score 102 points on the road you should win."

Batum missed his third consecutive game with a sprained toe on his right foot. His absence is certainly not the only reason the defense has eroded so severely.

The Hornets made a philosophical decision in the off-season to seek offense at the potential expense of defense. For instance, they chose not to make a $4 million qualifying offer for backup center Bismack Biyombo and did not replace him with another rim protector.

They also suffered some bad luck when small forward Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, their defensive stopper, tore the labrum in his right shoulder in October. Probably the best news Wednesday was that Kidd-Gilchrist has been cleared for all non-contact activity in practice.

Kidd-Gilchrist told me Wednesday morning he’ll definitely play this regular season, it’s just a matter of when. I won’t be surprised if he’s playing within a month.

MKG will have impact, but his return won’t cover up all sins. Clifford’s right that some players just don’t seem engaged by defense in this group.

They don’t have to be stoppers. But they must stop embarrassing themselves at that end of the floor.

This story was originally published January 7, 2016 at 1:06 AM with the headline "The Charlotte Hornets are dreadful defensively."