The Charlotte Hornets cut a 27 point deficit down to two in the fourth quarter, but they couldn’t get over the hump and lost to the Pistons, 112-102.

The summary

The Hornets got off to a miserable start, which has been rather par for the course lately. Without any real offensive creator outside of Miles Bridges, the Hornets had more turnovers (7) than made shots (6) in the first quarter. Meanwhile Tobias Harris and Malik Beasley played perfect quarters as the Pistons raced out to a 24 point lead in just one quarter of basketball.

To add injury to insult, Isaiah Stewart whacked Moussa Diabate in the face swatting at a rebound, and Diabate had to leave the game. While it was unintentional, the referees awarded the Hornets a technical free throw because “the contact was too severe to go unpunished.” Seth Curry calmly knocked down the free throw to cut the deficit to 26. The Hornets trailed by as many as 28 at one point. Seth Curry and Miles Bridges helped cut some of that away, then Isaiah Wong chipped in a little bit after Bridges went to the bench. The trio combined for 27 of the team’s 31 points in the quarter as they cut it down to a 20 point game by halftime.

The Hornets spent most of the third quarter trailing by 20+ points. Tidjane Salaün had a nice quarter, and Miles Bridges added another nine points to his tally. It was a relatively evenly played quarter and ended with the Hornets trailing by 17 points.

The Hornets blitzed the Pistons to start the fourth quarter. They scored ten straight points to cut the Pistons’ lead down to seven and force a timeout. The run extended all the way to a 17-2 mark and whittled the Pistons’ lead down to just two points. Seth Curry led the way the whole time. The Hornets had a chance to tie it up at one point, but Isaiah Wong’s floater wouldn’t fall. Cade Cunningham and Dennis Schroder hit jumpers to stop the run, and that started a slow separation between the teams as the minutes ticked down. The Hornets went cold, and the Pistons eventually pulled back ahead by double digits. Miles Bridges his a couple of tough threes in the final minutes, but the Pistons had created too much of an advantage for them to matter.

The Good

Seth Curry had his best game in a Hornets uniform. He got the start because of so many ailing teammates, and he did his part keeping the offense as afloat as it could be. He started slowly, but he took onus for the Hornets offense after its early struggles. He hunted for shots and made some relatively tough ones. He feels automatic when he gets any sort of look at the rim right now.

Miles Bridges had another good game. He fluffed his numbers a bit with a pair of threes that were effectively in garbage time, but they were both tough shots, so props for that. He finished with 30 points as the lead guy on the scouting report. Hopefully he’ll gain some confidence in his 3-point shot given how well he shot it yesterday.

Isaiah Wong scored a career high 17 points. They were somewhat hard to notice since he sprinkled them pretty evenly over the course of the game and only took nine shots, but it was another very good game for a Hornets two-way player.

I’ll roast his offensive play later, but Tidjane Salaün did some nice things with his activity level, particularly in the third quarter. He got to the line six times with his more effective drives of the day and a couple of nice stands defending Cade Cunningham.

The Bad

Moussa Diabate started his first game as a member of the Hornets’ varsity squad. To commemorate the occasion, he got hurt after about seven minutes of court time. You join the Hornets you get hurt. Those are the rules.

DaQuan Jeffries has had a few moments this season. Yesterday contained none of those moments. He didn’t score in 30 minutes of court time. In the first quarter, he missed to threes and turned the ball over on what I think were his only attempts to dribble the ball inside the 3-point line. He seemingly gave up on offense after that. He didn’t attempt a shot the rest of the way.

Tidjane Salaün looked real rough offensively in extended minutes. He did a few nice things on the glass, and the four assists are good, but the shooting was not great. He made just one of his 12 shot attempts and none of his six threes. The threes had a wide dispersion, missing short long and side to side. A few of his misses inside the arc didn’t even look like shot attempts. He struggled with defensive physicality and wound up throwing some really ugly…I’d guess you’d call them floaters or something…at the basket.

The clip starts a little too late to show the full sequence, but this play made me wonder if KJ Simpson can even dribble to his left. Cunningham just sat on his right hip, and Simpson tried by hell or highwater to get around him going to his right instead of taking a rather easy line to the bucket with his left hand.

What’s Next

The healthy bodies left on the Hornets will travel to Brooklyn to take on the Nets on Monday night.