The Cleveland Cavaliers and Charlotte Hornets will both be trying to stop the bleeding Monday night in Charlotte, where each team gets a shot at resetting after rough stretches.
Cleveland opens a three-game road trip having dropped three of its last four. Charlotte, meanwhile, comes in on a six-game skid and is coming off a 119-80 home loss to the Boston Celtics on Friday night before getting a two-day break.
“This is a tough league, tough schedule,” Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson said. “... We’ve got three on the road coming up; got to bounce back.”
For the Hornets, the time off may help after a stretch that has left them searching for answers.
“Right now, you’re in a little bit in a storm,” Hornets coach Charles Lee said. “We got to band together a little bit more.
We have to continue to work at even a higher rate. In these moments, you grow even stronger, you learn about yourself.”
Charlotte’s latest setback also came with a concern for Brandon Miller, who left in the second quarter because of what team officials described as right groin soreness.
“We’ll have more information on Monday,” Lee said, adding that the weekend off might afford time for Miller to recover.
The Hornets have also been shuffling the lineup. Grayson Allen and Ryan Kalkbrenner joined the starting five for the first time this season on Friday, a move Lee said fits the team’s approach.
“Like we said coming into the year, it was going to be by committee, and we had to commit to everything that was going to go out and embrace every day of our journey,” Lee said. “This is part of it.”
Lee has kept the tone upbeat despite the losses.
“At some point, I know we’re on the verge of a breakthrough,” he said. “We know how to get through it.”
Charlotte’s biggest statistical problem has been from deep. The Hornets are shooting 28.8 percent from 3-point range, second-worst in the NBA, but Lee said that won’t change the team’s shot selection.
“The mindset is still to find the best uncontested shot we can get,” Lee said.
Cleveland, by contrast, has been one of the league’s most active 3-point teams. The Cavaliers are averaging 15.4 made 3-pointers per game, second in the NBA behind the Golden State Warriors’ 16. Against the Knicks on Saturday, Cleveland launched 50 of its 82 field goal attempts from beyond the arc, with seven players taking at least four 3s.
Donovan Mitchell has carried the Cavaliers’ scoring load over the past four games, including a season-high 37 points in Saturday’s 109-97 home loss to New York in a rematch of last spring’s Eastern Conference finals. Atkinson said the offense wasn’t the only thing Mitchell brought to the floor.
“He was competing at a high level at the defensive end, too,” Atkinson said. “He kept after it.”
Atkinson also pointed to Cleveland’s rebounding as a major issue after the loss to the Knicks.
“We’ve got to find a way to rebound better collectively,” Atkinson said.
“It didn’t help that the shots weren’t falling,” Atkinson said of the Cavaliers’ bid for a comeback.
The Cavaliers are 1-3 on the road this season, though they have won their last four trips to Charlotte.
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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 🡒]
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Hornets Trade Debate Gets Worse Every Time Miles Bridges Delivers
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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 🡒]