The Charlotte Hornets are running out of ways to make a bad night feel new.
On Friday at the Spectrum Center, Boston turned the game into a runaway early and kept piling on, beating Charlotte behind Jayson Tatum’s 34 points as the Hornets dropped their sixth straight. The Celtics never really let the night breathe, and the Hornets looked overwhelmed from the start.
The injury situation only made the loss uglier. Brandon Miller left late in the second quarter with a groin injury and did not return. If the newly-minted $200M forward can’t recover in less than 72 hours, Charlotte is headed into its matchup with the Cleveland Cavaliers without Miller, Kon Knueppel, and Grant Williams.
That’s on top of the other bodies already dealing with issues: Moussa Diabate, Dennis Schröder, and Coby White are all nursing injuries too.
Charlotte was praised all summer for its depth, but that depth has been shredded just two weeks into the season. Charles Lee was forced to lean on a second-half group that included Christian Anderson Jr., Sion James, Liam McNeeley, Royce O’Neale, and Hannes Steinbach.
Nothing about those five players is the issue. They’re all NBA-caliber guys who belong in the league. The problem is that it’s November, and that collection of names was sharing the floor in the third quarter of a game.
The matchup also laid bare how close the Hornets want to play to Boston’s blueprint - and how far they are from pulling it off. Lee, a branch of Joe Mazzulla’s coaching tree, wants his team to fire from deep and control the game by winning the rebounding battle on both ends.
Instead, Boston beat Charlotte at its own game. Through three quarters, the Celtics had a +30 edge from three-point range, making 18 threes to Charlotte’s eight, and they also owned the glass, 42-34.
The Hornets’ offense never found any rhythm, and the mistakes kept stacking up. There were bad entry passes, backcourt violations, and fast-break possessions that went nowhere because Charlotte tried to feed an undersized guard at the rim with no real shot at finishing over a defender. Against a team like Boston, those mistakes don’t just show up - they snowball.
There was at least some intrigue in the starting lineup change Lee made with Diabate out. He opened with Coby White, Grayson Allen, Brandon Miller, Naz Reid, and Ryan Kalkbrenner, hoping Allen’s spacing might give the league’s worst offense a jolt.
It didn’t. That group managed only nine points in the first six minutes, and the Hornets never found a groove after that.
At this point, a simple lineup tweak isn’t enough to fix the offense. It’s going to take an exorcism.
In Other News...
Hornets Offense Just Took Another Hit They May Not Survive
The Hornets offense has already been trying to find its footing, and now the injury report has taken another hard turn. Charlotte announced that Kon Knueppel and Dennis Schroder have both been diagnosed with left hamstring strains, adding to a lineup that has been forced to absorb one setback after another. Brandon Miller is also set to miss an upcoming game with a right hip strain, leaving the team even thinner as it tries to keep its attack organized.
For a Hornets group that has leaned on young perimeter creation and veteran ball handling, the timing could hardly be worse. Knueppel is expected to be sidelined for at least four weeks, while Schroder will be out at least two weeks before being re-evaluated, and those absences leave Charlotte with more questions than answers in the backcourt and on the wing. The next stretch will say a lot about how much margin this roster has left. [Read more 🡒]
Hornets Are Sending Confusing Signals About Tidjane Salauns Future
The Hornets have spent the early part of this reshaped roster trying to balance development with a more veteran look, but Tidjane Salaun sits right at the center of the uncertainty. Charlotte still has reason to believe in the young forwards long-term upside, yet his playing time has been uneven and the organizations broader direction has become harder to read after the additions of Naz Reid and Grayson Allen in the wake of the LaMelo Ball and Miles Bridges trades.
For a rebuilding team, the challenge is supposed to be straightforward: identify the young core, give it room to grow and let the veterans fill in the gaps. Charlotte has not exactly followed that script, and Salauns place in the plan is now part of the larger question. The Hornets keep signaling that they want development to matter, but their recent moves have left the impression that the path forward is still being sorted out. [Read more 🡒]
Hornets Trade Debate Gets Worse Every Time Miles Bridges Delivers
Every time Miles Bridges puts together another productive night in Phoenix, the Hornets decision to move him looks a little harder to explain. Charlotte sent him to the Suns in a deal that was supposed to help reshape the roster and stockpile future assets, but the broader argument around the trade has only grown louder as Bridges has settled in and delivered the kind of steady all-around production that keeps a player in the spotlight.
For a team trying to build its way back into relevance, that matters. The Hornets need the long view to work in their favor, and this is the sort of move that gets judged not just by what came back in the moment, but by whether the return eventually matches the value of the player they gave up. Right now, the debate is less about what Charlotte wanted to do than whether it got enough to justify doing it. [Read more 🡒]