A glaring issue has the Charlotte Hornets headed in the wrong direction. Can they fix it?
Take a moment to reach down and tie a sneaker. Count to three. Chew a piece of gum and blow a couple of bubbles. Stir a drink with about five swirls.
Any of those things would essentially mirror the amount of time Sacramento had to line up its attempts from 3-point land Friday night. Or anywhere really. But especially beyond the arc, bombarding the Hornets and sending them flying all over the floor chasing down uncontested shots.
The Hornets were fully exposed in a 140-110 defeat to the Kings at the Golden 1 Center. In dropping their third straight and fourth in their past five games, the Hornets were cut apart defensively and pounded heavily on the glass.
Chalk it up as yet another unbelievably maddening defensive performance.
“I think our defense definitely let us down and credit them.,” Gordon Hayward said. “They’re a fast team and they put a lot of pressure on you. And they were knocking down shots, too. I think we were trying to protect the paint early and they started knocking down threes, and now you’re kind of scrambling, scrambling out to stop the bleeding there.
“And then it seemed like they were getting just about anything they wanted transition in the half court. So our defense for sure let us down.”
In more ways than one.
The Hornets’ never-ending scrambling led to a franchise record 22 made 3-pointers by Sacramento, which canned 56% of its shots beyond the arc in the first half and shredded Charlotte for 74 first-half points. The Kings posted 103 points through three quarters.
Richaun Holmes, one of the players supposedly on the Hornets’ radar this past offseason, hauled in a career-high 20 rebounds and pounded them for 23 points. Holmes got the best of Mason Plumlee, who fouled out, and torched them inside. Sacramento nearly doubled up the Hornets in the rebounding department.
The Hornets have to get more production out of the center position, something that didn’t get any easier with PJ Washington sidelined for a bit after hyperextending his left elbow.
A soft interior made it seem like the Kings were motoring along a Northern California freeway. That lack of rim protection paired and with yielding a conga line beyond the 3-point line was disturbing. Uncontested shots, especially in transition, were prevalent from the game’s first possession.
“Pretty much we’ve just got to get locked in,” LaMelo Ball said. “I feel like we were a little sluggish getting back. So we’ll watch the film and see where the mistakes are coming from.”
Are these issues mostly schematic or effort-related?
“It’s a little bit of both,” coach James Borrego said. “We’ll watch the film, we’ll correct it. We’ll talk through it again. And it’s going to take a process here. It’s not going to happen overnight. Building a team like this is not going to happen overnight.”
Their struggles against the Kings were nothing new. In reality, that’s been kind of the norm for the Hornets (5-5). They rank dead last in defensive rating in the league, yielding 113.3 points per game. The only other team with a winning record sitting in the bottom five is Memphis, which coincidentally is the team the Hornets conclude this five-game road trip with. To take it a step further, besides the Hornets and Grizzlies, the lone other team in the bottom nine defensively with a record above .500 is Sacramento.
There appears to be a direct effect on occasions when the ball is bouncing off the rim rather than falling through the net for the Hornets.
“When we go dry offensively, I think it affects or defense,” Borrego said. “And good teams in this league maintain their defensive intensity and principles, no matter what they go through on the offensive end. And this is a challenge for everybody in the league, especially a young team. There is a discipline that you have to have as a team and a focus that, ‘I’m not worried about last possession offensively. I’m still committed to the defensive end.’ We are not quite there yet. We are aware of it and we are talking through it.”
Those chats need to produce tangible results soon. Fixing the non-stop leaks is the only way their can achieve any kind of success and give themselves a chance to reach some of their goals.
But it must happen as a collective unit.
“Certainly not trying to go at this individually,” Hayward said. “We definitely have to attack this together. That’s just the reality of it. We’ve got to give ourselves a chance whether the shots are going down or not. We have to give ourselves a chance in the game with our defense and we didn’t do that.
“And you know if we don’t do that, then you’re going to have nights like this all the time. Players in the NBA are too good. So we’ve got to figure it out.”
This story was originally published November 6, 2021 at 7:00 AM with the headline "A glaring issue has the Charlotte Hornets headed in the wrong direction. Can they fix it?."
