The bright lights of ESPN proved too much for the Charlotte Hornets as they lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Summary
The Hornets looked a little overhyped by the moment on ESPN. They fell behind 8-0 after four straight bad possessions to start the game. LaMelo came off the bench shortly after, but it didn’t help much. Charles Lee had to burn his second timeout of the game just over five minutes in with his team down 19-4. They got crushed on the offensive glass and generally looked tentative in all facets of the game. Kon Knueppel was able to inject a little bit of life with seven straight points, but that didn’t carry for long. It somehow got worse in the second quarter. They did absolutely nothing well and went into the break with 32 points scored and 24 point deficit.
Whatever Charles Lee and the boys talked about in the half got them moving in the right direction. They started the second half on a 10-2 run and forced a Kenny Atkinson timeout. Brandon Miller took it upon himself to carry the offense, and he succeeded. He scored 17 in the third alone, which was almost enough to match the Cavs entire team thanks to some renewed defensive focus (most of the time). By quarter’s end, the deficit had been trimmed to 12.
The momentum carried into the fourth, where the Hornets quickly cut the margin into single digits. Knueppel and Josh Green were the biggest drivers of the rally. They got as close as seven, but a Cavs timeout seemed to sap all their momentum. They made one more late push thanks to more heroics from Knueppel and Miller, but they ultimately couldn’t make enough shots and ran out of time.
The Good
Kon Knueppel was uncharacteristically inefficient, but there were times when it seemed like he was the only Hornet ready to play. You could see him assert himself more and more as the game went on, seemingly frustrated with the amount of nothing that some of his teammates were doing. He finished with 21 points and 11 rebounds. Really the only thing missing from his game was his 3-points shooting, but everybody knows he can do that. Given how well he did the things people don’t expect of him, I’d like to think he helped his standing in the NBA fan community.
Second half Brandon Miller was a problem. He created a bunch of looks and made shots that will be impossible to guard whenever he makes them consistently. He’s just gotta do the consistent part.
Josh Green deserves a better box score. He did finish a +12, which was not by happenstance. He was all over the floor corralling loose balls and long rebounds. He was disruptive defensively and did exactly what Josh Green was supposed to do. He was a shot in the arm that the Hornets needed.
The Bad
When I say the Hornets did nothing well in the first half, I mean literally nothing. They shot 26% from the field. They were 3-of-24 from three. They didn’t move the ball. They were soft on defense. The let the Cavs rebound almost half of their own misses. It was one of the worst halves of basketball the Hornets have played in a long while, even by the standards they’ve set in the last few down season. It looked like kids playing in front of a crowd for the first times in their lives. The moment looked too big.
Miles Bridges was completely invisible. He didn’t score much and didn’t put a rebound, assist, steal, or block in the box score until there were about four minutes left in the game. In a game where too many Hornets didn’t show up, he may have been the worst offender.
LaMelo Ball, just, I don’t know. Normally he rises to the occasion when there’s more eyeballs, be it against a good team or in a nationally televised game. But in this one, that didn’t happen for whatever reason. He reverted to some of his early season struggles where he became fixated on trying to get his three ball to go down, and it quite literally never did. 10 of his 15 shot attempts were 3-pointers, and none of them went in. He finished the game with two points and no free throw attempts. He gets credit for trying defensively, but the overall game was not good.
Brandon Miller got called for a lane violation on a first free throw in the fourth quarter. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but if you want to be a serious team, you can’t do unserious stuff like that.
The Hornets bigs got bodied pretty bad by the Cavs, especially Ryan Kalkbrenner. He’s had his fair share of struggles against more physical bigs, and that weakness was pretty pronounced against the likes of Jarrett Allen, Evan Mobley, and even Nae’Qwan Tomlin.
What’s Next
The Hornets are right back at it with a back to back. Up next is a Magic team that I had forgotten even existed until this very moment.