The Charlotte Hornets won by losing to the New Orleans Pelicans, 98-94.
The Summary
Both teams clearly knew the importance of this game. With only a game and a half between them in the standings, both trotted out about as weak a lineup as they could. Miles Bridges came out aggressively trying to shake off the rough last few outings he had to mixed results. Everyone else that played in the first quarter for Charlotte scored exactly two points. Both teams got a lot of their points by getting out on the break, and they ended the first quarter all knotted up.
The second quarter was hard to pay attention to. The Pelicans built a house of bricks while the Hornets scored enough with some of their regulars to build a decent lead. The Pelicans were able to manufacture enough buckets to cut the Hornets’ lead down to nine at the half.
After a Miles Bridges dunk, Antonio Reeves decided to hit three straight 3-pointers for New Orleans. Both teams had a nice helping of smoked layups over the course of the quarter, but the Pelicans’ hit a couple more threes after Reeves’ to somewhat cancel that out. A 15-6 Pelicans run capped off by a Keion Brooks 3-point play put the Pelicans up three late, and a goofy Wendell Moore layup cut it back down to one heading into the fourth.
Both teams tried buckling down defensively in the fourth, which was made all that much easier by the fact that most of the good offensive players got pulled a few minutes in. Reeves hit another three to put the Pelicans up five with about five minutes left, but that was answered by a KJ Simpson three and a dish to Moussa Diabate who thundered home a left handed dunk while getting fouled. The Pelicans beat up the Hornets on the glass to keep a modest lead for a few more minutes, but Nick Smith Jr. pulled up for three with 40 seconds left to wipe that all away and put the Hornets up one. That would be the last points the Hornets would score. Jose Alvarado drove straight to the basket after a timeout and made a layup while getting bopped in the head by DaQuan Jeffries. Jeffries threw a somewhat errant pass on the ensuing inbound and KJ Simpson did a bad job trying to reel it in, and the ball rolled out of bounds. Alvarado dished the an interior dime to Keion Brooks to seal the win.
The Good
The Hornets outscored the Pelicans when Miles Bridges, Jusuf Nurkic, and Josh Okogie were on the floor, so they did a good job of making sure those players didn’t play too many minutes, particularly in the second half. All three had pretty good games in their time on the floor.
Josh Okogie only played in the first half as the team manages his minutes coming off a hamstring strain. In his 11 minutes, he made a big impact. He swiped a pair of steals, and his disruptiveness defensively has been huge for the Hornets when he’s been healthy. Small sample size and stuff, but the Hornets are 24.7 points per 100 possessions better with Okogie on the floor than all of their minutes without him this season.
You can’t have “good” games without making shots forever, but I thought Tidjane Salaün was pretty alright outside of the shooting. He wasn’t without his moments of goofiness, but he’s at least looking a little more comfortable on the floor. He had other moments as well, like a few nice passes on the move that led to assists, and he earned his steals with good anticipation.
Nick Smith Jr. had a nice shooting night and led the Hornets in scoring.
The Bad
DaQuan Jeffries has to be threatening the worst field goal percentage on dunks in NBA history. It feels like he’s good for a miss just about every other game. According to Basketball Reference, he’s now 12-of-24 on dunks for the season, and a hefty amount of those 12 misses have been with little no defense on him. He had one last night where he had a wide open look off a backdoor cut and two hand slammed it off the back of the rim. He had a couple of other oopsies as well at key moments late, but that’s probably good for the Hornets at this point.
It’s hard to be too critical of anyone. The Hornets are trying to not play too well to win too much.
What’s Next
The Hornets have another game with heavy lottery implications as the return home to host the league worst Jazz tonight.