The Charlotte Hornets outdid themselves Thursday night. In the midst of a 2-14 deficit between the regular season and the NBA Cup, the team headed to Washington on a night with no excuses. Charlotte's key players all returned to health at the same time after suffering sporadic injuries throughout the season, and the Hornets were coming back from a few days off. It was time to get things back on track.
We lost 113-110. The Wizards are currently 5-23 on the season. two Regarding the win against the Hornets. It wasn't just the loss to a bad team that hurt Hornets fans, it was the way they played basketball that made no sense at all, leaving everyone wondering what the hell was wrong with this team. . Why does Charlotte fail so spectacularly when LaMelo Ball is one of the best players in the NBA in scoring and assists? Scored 48.2 points per game alone.?How can this team be worse if Brandon Miller is scoring more points?? Now that the Big Hornets are healthy, how are the struggling Hornets doing?
The biggest question is, why is this Hornets team so bad even with Charles Lee as their head coach? celtics Did the assistant agree to come to Charlotte after the NBA Finals?
It can be broadly summarized into three elements.
Part 1: Charlotte's volume shooter's shooting accuracy is low.
Regardless of how fun LaMelo Ball is to watch due to his unique style of play and high volume, he has been extremely inefficient this season. Ball is shooting 34.6 percent from 3-point range, or 13.0 shots per game, compared to the league average of 36 percent. Meanwhile, his true shooting plus is 97, compared to the league average of 100.
This may seem like a small difference, but if the Hornets' best player is less efficient than league average, it doesn't matter what raw numbers he's putting up. The situation is even worse as Brandon Miller is also struggling, hitting 35.2% from three and 40% from two.
Ball and Miller combined for 24 3PAs per game and over 43 FGAs per game. This kind of heavy usage and disastrous inefficiency is a bad recipe, and you'll see the same story far down the list.
Number 2: Charles Lee is making this team play with “atmosphere” in all the wrong ways.
The most surprising thing about Charles Lee's coaching is how much freedom he allows his players to play. On paper, this might seem like a good thing, but on a young Hornets roster that already doesn't handle discipline well, it brought out everyone's worst traits.
Ball plays on the island for the majority of the possession. Sure, he can still pass and is averaging 7.4 assists, but that's down from the past two years when he averaged over 8.0 assists per game. Ball now considers himself to be the team's main scorer, which leads to a lot of thoughtless shots. He still doesn't quite get along with (or fully trust) Brandon Miller, and it shows.
Meanwhile, everyone else on the periphery plays as they please. No firm plans have been made for rookie Tijan Saraun, who showed some early flashes of promise, but now he likes to run around the arc and jack up threes, and the odds are against him. It remains at only 30.3%.
You're left with a very diverse rotation, but at any given time you'll end up with five individuals playing basketball with no cohesion or teamwork. It threw Charlotte into complete confusion.
Number 3: This team doesn't have a clear offensive identity.
There's nothing inherently wrong with being a ball-dominant point guard. Hey, the Thunder are doing just that with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The key difference is that Oklahoma City has a clear plan for SGA, while the Hornets have none after LaMelo.
Watching the Thunder play, it's clear that everything flows through the SGA when it comes to possession, but Jaylen Williams has been able to use it when needed to free up off-ball movement for the team's primary scorer. It can function as a second point. From there they push the boundaries and send things to Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein.
Meanwhile, the Hornets have Ball as their primary point guard. Often he jacks up threes or drives in floaters. Sometimes they work, and sometimes it's great, and sometimes they don't. When the ball hits Stonewall, he passes it out to Brandon Miller for a three-shooter. Sometimes they work, and sometimes it's great, and sometimes they don't. If that doesn't happen, he'll pass to Miles Bridges, who will shoot a three that probably won't go well.
There has been little work done internally this year due to a number of injuries to the bigs, but even with the return of Mark Williams and Nick Richards, they are still underutilized. This made them one of the most miserable offensive teams in the NBA, ranking 28th in scoring and 24th in pace, despite Ball having a prolific scorer with over 30 points.
It's been a terrible season for the Hornets.
As of now, the Hornets are on track for a 19-63 record on the year, which would be Charlotte's worst since the Bobcats in 2012-13. The team finished with 21 wins, with Kemba Walker and Gerald Henderson leading the team in score.
What makes this so frustrating is that this is the most talented roster Charlotte has had in years and yet nothing is coming together. While the organization preaches patience and other struggling organizations like the Pistons and Spurs move up the standings, fans watch everything go awry.
Perhaps the plan at this point is to attack Cooper Flagg, but that may not even save the organization. The Hornets aren't the worst team in the NBA, but they're definitely the most pathetic.
