Brandon Miller scored a game high 24 points, but the Charlotte Hornets were simply outmatched by the Cleveland Cavaliers, 115-92.
The Summary
The game featured a rather uneventful start. It was a little sloppy and low scoring. Both teams, but especially the Cavs, fired away a bunch of threes and missed almost all of them. The rather dull first quarter ended with the game tied at 20.
The second quarter was a little more interesting, but not necessarily for basketball reasons. Tristan Thompson got called for a foul early in the quarter for karate chopping Nick Richards in the neck, but the play wasn’t reviewed for some reason. A few minutes later, Marcus Morris threw a forearm at a cutting Nick Richards and again caught him in the neck. He wasn’t as fortunate as Thompson and was ejected for his transgression. In between all of that, the Cavs outscored the Hornets 10-7 over a six minute span. The Cavs went on to hit five straight threes and went on to make 7-of-10 in the quarter as they built a 14 point lead heading into the half.
Brandon Miller started the second half scoring with a 3-pointer and followed with an and-1 and a pull-up 20 footer shortly after. It helped the Hornets hang around for the whole third quarter, though they couldn’t chip away at the lead at all. They still trailed by 12 heading into the fourth.
A couple of Sam Merrill threes early in the fourth quarter busted the game open. The Hornets tried to hang around with buckets from Miller and Tre Mann, but they couldn’t withstand the onslaught coming from Merrill and company. The Cavs held a lead in the mid to upper teens for most of the fourth quarter before Darius Garland drilled the dagger to put the Cavs up 21 with three minutes to go.
The Good
Brandon Miller. He had a game high 24 points and a team high eight rebounds. He seemed to be the only Hornet that was really locked in throughout the whole game. He hit a few tough threes, created looks for himself off the dribble, and had a couple of nice passes.
Tre Mann had a good second half. He hit a couple of really deep threes, contributed his usual activity on the glass, and led the team in assists.
The BAd
Brandon Miller’s teammates. There was a point in the third quarter where Miller was visibly frustrated with a couple of bad plays by his teammates. First, he found Aleksej Pokusevski running the lane in transition (though he may have gotten in the way of Miles Bridges), but Poku smoked the easy layup. A possession or two later, Miller drove baseline and made a good read trying to kick to the opposite corner. Unfortunately Miles Bridges did not make the same read, and he failed to fill that corner and let the ball sail out of bounds. It’s frustrating to see a rookie be the only player that’s really engaged and making sound decisions on a team with some experience.
In other frustrating things–it was another game where the opponent is so much harder to guard over the course of a possession than the Hornets are. The Cavs caught the Hornets with a few back cuts, which is probably a few more than we’ve seen the Hornets get all season. The pace a decisiveness stressed the Hornets defense, who did handle it well a lot of the time. The problem is on the offensive end, where the Hornets just don’t make defenses work. The decision making is slow, the ball doesn’t move, and the bodies without the ball don’t move.
What’s Next
The Hornets finally get to return home after an insanely difficult stretch of road games. They’ll play this very same Cavs team for the first game of an eight game homestand.
