The Charlotte Hornets outdid themselves on Thursday night. In the midst of 2-14 run between the regular season and NBA Cup the team headed to Washington on a night where there were no excuses. Charlotte’s core players were all healthy at once after being injures sporadically throughout the season, and the Hornets were coming off a couple of days rest. Now was the time to get things back on track.
They lost 113-110. The Wizards, now 5-23 on the season have two of their wins against the Hornets. It’s not just losing to a bad team that has broken Hornets fans, but the absolutely nonsensical way they play basketball which has everyone wondering what the hell went wrong with this team. How is Charlotte failing so spectacularly when LaMelo Ball is among the NBA’s best in points and assists, generating 48.2 points-per-game by himself? How is this team somehow worse when Brandon Miller is scoring more? How are the Hornets struggling now their bigs are healthy?
The biggest lingering question: How is this Hornets team so godawful after hiring Charles Lee as head coach, a universally hailed hiring when the Celtics assistant agreed to come to Charlotte after the NBA Finals?
It comes down to three big factors.
No. 1: Charlotte’s volume shooters are shooting poorly
Regardless of how fun LaMelo Ball is to watch due to his unique play style and big volume, he’s been extremely inefficient this season. Ball is shooting 34.6% from three when the league-average is 36%, and he’s jacking them up at a rate of 13.0 per game. Meanwhile his true shooting plus is 97, while the league average is 100.
This might seem like small differences, but when the Hornets’ best player is less efficient than the league average it doesn’t matter what kind of raw numbers he puts up. This is compounded by the fact that Brandon Miller is also struggling, shooting 35.2% from three, and 40% from two.
Ball and Miller are combining for 24 3PA per game, and over 43 FGA per game. That kind of prolific usage paired with woeful inefficiency is a bad recipe, and you see the same story all the way down the roster.
No. 2: Charles Lee has this team playing on “vibes,” in all the wrong ways
The most astonishing aspect of Charles Lee’s coaching is how free he allows his players to play. On paper you might think this is a good thing, but on a young Hornets roster that already didn’t cope well with discipline it’s brought out everyone’s worst traits.
Ball plays on an island for a majority of possessions. Sure, he’ll still pass and he’s averaging 7.4 assists, but this is a drop from the last two years where he averaged over 8.0 per game. Now Ball sees himself as the primary scorer on the team, and that’s led to a lot of ill-advised shots. He’s yet to really gel with Brandon Miller (or fully trust him), and it shows.
Meanwhile everyone else on the periphery plays however the hell they feel like it. There’s no solid plan in place around rookie Tidjane Salaun, who showed some promising early flashes — but now he likes to run around the arc and jack up threes, which are only falling at a 30.3% rate.
We’re left with a huge variety of rotations, but ultimately at any point it’s five individuals playing basketball with no cohesiveness or teamwork. It’s devolved Charlotte into a total mess.
No. 3: There’s no clear offensive identity for this team
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a ball-dominant point guard. Heck, the Thunder are doing just that with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The core difference is that Oklahoma City has a clear plan around SGA, while the Hornets have nothing after LaMelo.
Watching the Thunder play it’s clear that everything flows through SGA on possessions, but with Jalen Williams being able to operate as a second point when needed to free up the off-ball movement of the team’s primary scorer. From there they stretch the perimeter and feed things into Chet Holmgren or Isaiah Hartenstein.
The Hornets, on the other hand, have Ball as their primary point guard. A lot of the time he’ll jack up a three, or drive with a floater. They’ll sometimes work and it’s amazing, or they won’t. If Ball gets stonewalled he’ll pass out to Brandon Miller who will shoot a three. They’ll sometimes work and it’s amazing, or they won’t. If those don’t happen he’ll pass to Miles Bridges, who will shoot a three and probably won’t work.
There’s little-to-no work being done inside, which is partly a product of the bigs bring hurt a lot this year — but even now Mark Williams and Nick Richards are back they’re not being used enough. This makes for one of the most woeful offensive teams in the NBA, ranking 28th in points scored and 24th in pace — despite having a prolific 30+ scorer in Ball.
This is an awful season for the Hornets
As it stands the Hornets are on pace for a 19-63 record on the year — which would be Charlotte’s worst since the 2012-13 BOBCATS. That team finished with 21 wins with Kemba Walker and Gerald Henderson being the team’s top scorers.
What makes this so frustrating is that this is the most talented roster Charlotte has had in years, and nothing is coming together. While the organization is preaching patience fans are watching everything slip away, while other struggling organizations like the Pistons and Spurs are ascending.
Perhaps the plan at this point is to tank for Cooper Flagg, but that might not even save this organization. The Hornets aren’t the worst team in the NBA, but they are easily the most pathetic.
