The Charlotte Hornets suffered their third straight demolition, this time at the hands of the Golden State Warriors, 128-92.

The summary

The game started well enough. The Hornets played the Warriors even for the first few minutes of the game, but that feels irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. The offense bogged down in the back half of the first quarter and the Hornets fell into a 10 point hole by quarter’s end.

The struggles in the later part of the first continued into the second. The Warriors put a bunch of pressure on Hornets ball handlers, and they simply couldn’t handle it. The Warriors created effortless baskets on offense while the Hornets couldn’t do anything on offense. A couple of Josh Green threes gave the Hornets a little life late in the half, but they still trailed by 15 at the break.

The third quarter was more of the same. The Hornets couldn’t buy a bucket, and there was a bevy of mismatches on the defensive end that the Warriors continued to exploit. It turned into another laugher pretty early in the second half. Seth Curry scored 11 in the quarter, which was about the only thing that was watchable. The Hornets trailed by 32 heading into winning time.

The Hornets interestingly left Mark Williams and Nick Smith Jr. for a large part of the fourth quarter while the Warriors emptied their bench. It didn’t really help matters, as they didn’t make up any ground.

The Good

Seth Curry was the only player that really looked like he belonged on the floor. He had a big third quarter and was the only player that was effective with the bulk of his minutes.

KJ Simpson actually led the Hornets in shot attempts in scoring. It wasn’t a super well played game, but kudos for having a decent looking box score.

The Bad

The Hornets looked like a college team against defensive pressure. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an NBA game with so many live ball steals straight from a ball handler. The Warriors finished with 16 steals, and it seemed like the majority of them were the on ball defender either stealing the dribble or deflecting the pass. Hopefully none of the back court players involved in this game will be a part of the plans next season, and tonight was an illustration why.

The Hornets were also completely overmatched defensively. They gave up 62 points in the paint, which probably doesn’t fully capture how bad the defense was on the inside with regular players playing. Some of that is on the Hornets bigs, but I found myself thinking that the perimeter defense was the bigger problem. The Hornets were put in help situations over and over again, either from guys getting beat off the dribble or size mismatches in the post. The Warriors would cut to the rim as soon as the help left them, which led to a whole heap of uncontested dunks and layups. The ball containment was horrendous.

It doesn’t feel right to single out any individuals for poor play. It was a pretty solid all around team effort. It’s now three straight games where the Hornets have been badly overmatched. It feels like this happens every time they have a big west coast road trip. Hopefully this atrocious form ends when the road trip does at least. Props to anyone who’s continued paying attention.

What’s Next

Only one game left before this road trip comes to a merciful end. That comes on Thursday against PJ Washington and the Luka Doncic-less Mavericks on Thursday.