If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d start questioning why we are losing games in quite the “non-traditional “ fashion. You may wonder why I would say this. To keep my recap brief, I’ll get right into what all I heard and saw in regards to the game and then I’ll share my take on it.
I watched the whole game and I saw Cody Zeller doing lots of great things. He had 16 minutes in the first half, had a couple highlight-worthy dunks, and on the night he had 8 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists on 0 turnovers, and 3 blocks. I want numbers like that out of him. My problem is that for the night he played 20 minutes. In my mind, I have to question why that would be. We were all told, and every article I’ve seen this morning said that he struggled to contain Kevin Love, so he was pulled. Now, I didn’t see Marvin Williams or Jason Maxiell do any better job containing him, so I have to start scratching my head as to why we pulled him. Cody’s hustle, which provides stats not in the box score, is always sorely missed when he’s not out there. Kevin Love is going to do his thing. That is always a given. If there’s a 6’10” guy out there hitting shots, I’d really rather have my athletic 7-footer sticking him than bringing in the “smaller cover” for offensive purposes. Granted, Marvin Williams had 10 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists with 1 turnover, and a steal, I’d still prefer the bigger guy that hustles in there. If anyone was on Twitter, I was begging to get Zeller and MKG back into the game with over 8 minutes left in the 4th. It didn’t happen. Why MKG as well as Zeller? Well, he’s another hustle guy that helps so much without it showing up in that box score. In terms of the box score, MKG had 12 points and 10 rebounds. He did so much out there that is a positive, I don’t get why the defensive-strong guys get planted on the bench down the stretch.
I am saying that I don’t get the rotations down the stretch, but the reality is that I’m never surprised by it. We have seen this all season. We fall behind in the 4th, and we go to that “offensive strong lineup that has any combination of Neal, Williams, Hairston, and/or Roberts on the floor. Those guys are our “go-to” shooters. The problem is that they aren’t very good at what they are doing. I begged them to step inside the 3-point line and shoot because they are shooting so poorly behind it (21.4% on 6 – 28 shooting last night). Roberts, Neal, and Hairston all were hitting long 2s and runners. When they spot up for that 3, it’s seldom that it falls. When you need points to catch up, the last thing you want to do is to fire up low percentage shots, but we do it game after game. Get the quick 2 and play defense. Something that the team or coaching staff has yet to grasp is that the starters we are running now (Kemba, Hendo, MKG, Zeller, and Biz) can play defense and score the ball quickly. The 46-point first half points to that. The closing stretch to the 2nd with Hairston, Neal, Roberts, and Williams in there exposed that there is no defense when those guys are on the floor. The 11-point lead shrunk while they were in, and evaporated away in the second half. Defense wins games, but we force the issue to have offense in down the stretch. You can’t win games by trading baskets. Defensive stops and scores win them. I don’t know when we will learn this. By the way, the Neal/Hairston/Roberts/Williams group was 12 of 32 from the floor (37.5%) and made up 5 of our 6 3-pointers. Not a good stat.
I praise where praise is due. Cody, you have my praise at the beginning of this article. I hope you get more minutes because you deserve respect from this coaching staff, the NBA, and especially it’s referees. It’s atrocious how poorly any of our games are officiated. You react the best because you don’t show any “bad” emotion if you don’t get a call. You suck it up and keep playing, and I love that out of a hard working player.
Gerald Henderson, you sir, continue to do your thing. 14 points, 8 rebounds, 4 assists with 2 turnovers is a good stat line for you. You’re averaging 16.3 points, 5.3 rebounds, 3.7 assists, and 1 steal per game. You’re doing these things through aggressive play, attacking the basket, and making smart decisions. Twitter always beats you up because the ball winds up in your hands as the shot clock is expiring. Make a mental note of that when you’re on the floor. I defend you because when the ball gets to you with 4 seconds left on that shot clock and you have 2 defenders on you that are all over you, I really don’t know what they expect you to do. I guess you could take on a “LeBron-like” persona and just launch something towards the hoop and flop like you’ve been shot…just a thought. Seriously though, I’ve enjoyed seeing the aggressive Hendo play, and I hope he sticks with us for the rest of the season.
In closing, we had 5 guys score in double figures with 3 that were 1 basket away from 10. That’s a pretty good night. I really expected a win last night, but like I said, these rotations down the stretch, like we have seen all season, are not producing offensively enough to outweigh the defense that it sacrifices.
I made mention of not being a conspiracy theorist. If I were one, I would suspect that the weird rotations down the stretch were on purpose. I would think that we intentionally play the guys with bad defense and supposedly good jump shooting to either showcase what they can do in order to trade them. The defense used for playing these rotations is that we need offense to score some points. It makes the coach look bad, however, because he has no defense in the game to stop scoring. The result is that the fans scream for what was a great coach last year to be fired, what were good players last season to be traded, and all sorts of confusion to the “new” Hornets fans as to what they should believe. It also makes fans believe that we may be thinking about tanking the season in order to get a high draft pick.
These are all arguments on Twitter right now. There are arguments that Clifford has no clue, that Al should be traded, that Lance should be traded, that the whole team should be blown up and we just rebuild, again. It’s all out there. I sit and read and try to say true to what I believe in. It’s never been easy to watch my team lose. Believe me, that 7-win season made me quite numb to it all. This season, however, has me scratching my head. There are games where everything seems to be clicking, so we make a substitution that kills it, and then we just stick with it in hopes that it starts clicking. While we wait, our lead fades away, we fall behind, and we play catch up the rest of the game with an “offensive-minded” lineup. I love my Hornets and I’m behind them 100%, but this is the first time I’m actually questioning our game play and wondering why what appears to be obvious to me is so hard for the coaching staff to see. They’re the ones that can make a difference, and there’s no way Clifford, Ewing, Silas, and Price can’t see what’s happening.
Time heals all wounds, right? Well, we have a game in about 8 hours, so heal baby heal. We’ll be facing the Magic in Orlando. Our guys need to gather themselves and step up to the challenge. We need to stop this losing streak at 5.
Let’s Go Hornets!
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