A poor start and some really bad defense canceled out a 24/10/10 triple double from Miles Bridges as the Charlotte Hornets lost to the Wizards, 124-114.

The Summary

The first few minutes of the game proved to be emblematic of its totality. The Wizards took an early lead thanks to a toothless Hornets offense and apathetic defense. The Hornets briefly took a lead thanks to 11 straight points from Nick Smith Jr. but were otherwise uninspiring in an even first period.

The Hornets got a little sloppy with the ball and the Wizards started scoring in multiples of threes to break out a double digit lead. That lead ballooned to 25 at one point late in the half with the Hornets clearly getting frustrated with the direction of the game. The Wizards didn’t miss many shots, and when they did, they got a lot of the rebounds and capitalized. The Hornets trailed by 23 at the break after giving up a whopping 77 points.

The Hornets showed some life coming out of the half. They did enough to help the Wizards miss their first eight shots of the quarter as the deficit faded away. They got it within single digits when Miles Bridges found Vasa Micic trailing on a fast break for three. Bridges cut it all the way down to five thanks to a 5-on-4 situation that spawned from Bub Carrington stopping to tie his shoe, but a couple buckets set the margin to nine heading into the fourth quarter

The third quarter proved to be an anomaly. The Wizards scored the first ten points of the fourth quarter to effectively kill any hopes of a comeback. There was a moment where the Hornets looked to make that comeback anyway when NSJ pulled them within nine with just over five minutes to go, but the Wizards made enough shots down the stretch to keep plenty of distance between the two teams as time wound down.

The Good

Miles Bridges notched his first career triple double. There were points throughout the game where he felt like the only Hornet that belonged on the floor. The Hornets won his minutes by 12 points, so he certainly didn’t deserve for that accomplishment to come in a loss.

It was good to see another good performance out of Nick Smith Jr. He’s showing more and more potential as the season goes on. Now he just needs to find a way to play like this consistently.

Mark Williams finished with a relatively quiet 23 points and 14 rebounds outside of a strong fourth quarter. That’s a sign of a very good player.

The Bad

The Hornets are now 0-3 against the Wizards this season. They seem to struggle more with bad teams than good ones, which would be a mentality problem. They didn’t play with a lot of poise or focus, and that’s been a problem in every meeting. It’s like they expect the game to be easy, and when it’s not, too many players try to do too much to fix it. Plus the Wizards are still a team of professional basketball players. You give them an easy start and let them start feeling themselves, it’s going to be hard to rein that back in.

What’s Next

The Hornets have a typical Monday/Wednesday/Friday slate of games this week. Wednesday’s matchup will feature the Milwaukee Bucks.