The Charlotte Hornets cruised to a 125-102 blowout loss to the Kings on Friday night.

The Summary

The Hornets kept pace with the Kings for most of the first quarter thanks in no small part to the fact that the Kings missed literally all of their shots from three, many of which were wide open. The Hornets had their own fair share of wild misses, but the worst misses make for the best offensive rebounds. They eventually fell off as they gotten taken to school by DeMar DeRozan for a couple of minutes and went into the second quarter down by eight.

The slow, clunky offense that plagued the Hornets’ offense in the first quarter continued into the second. Points were very hard to come by aside from some self created baskets by Miles Bridges and KJ Simpson. Malik Monk led the resurgent 3-point shooting Kings out to a 19 point halftime lead.

Trey Lyles hit a trio of triples to lead more strong shooting from the visitors in the third quarter. The Hornets fired away on the other end but with little to no success. The Kings gradually pulled away and took a 26 point lead heading into the final quarter.

The Hornets killer himself Zach LaVine took his turn taking over the game to start the fourth quarter. He hit a few threes in rapid succession like he always seems to against the Hornets. That put the game more than out of reach. The only thing worth paying attention to late was if Seth Curry could get a couple more threes towards the season long 3-point shooting crown, but his teammates didn’t seem particularly interested in helping out.

The Good

This play from Miles Bridges:

.@MilesBridges with the assist to Miles Bridges 😳@drpepper | 🎥 @FDSN_Hornets pic.twitter.com/qQBLbdxJFh

— Charlotte Hornets (@hornets) April 5, 2025

I’ve continued to be impressed by KJ Simpson’s development down the stretch. It’s March NBA basketball, so it needs to be taken with a grain of salt, but he’s shown a lot of improvement since the beginning of the season. He still needs to make outside shots, but he’s doing everything else at a pretty good level. He had a couple of craft shots inside the arc and is managing the game better.

Speaking of development, Moussa Diabate has been on a pretty solid upward trajectory. He and Simpson were the only real thorns in the side of the Kings at any point throughout the game. He’s been getting minutes at the four and trying to stretch his game out. It hasn’t gone overly well, but you like to see it.

Jaylen Sims has been grinding with the Swarm long enough to be the team’s all time leading scorer. He got called up to the big club earlier in the day and got to score his first seven NBA points. Well deserved and well done for the hometown kid.

The Bad

The Hornets offense looked like early preseason offense for a lot of the game. You can’t really be mad at it because most of the good players aren’t playing and the playing groups are changing from game to game, but it was still a tough watch. There were a lot of possessions where the ball wouldn’t get inside the 3-point line until there were less than five seconds on the shot clock and whoever had the ball was desperately trying to create a look. It was too passive and too slow. Dell Curry even mentioned on the broadcast how the Hornets needed to pick up the pace with the ball because they weren’t doing anything productive in the half court.

Tidjane Salaün needs to work on playing off two feet around the basket. He has plenty of ball handling problems, but that issue in particular was very prominent last night. He would get caught on his second step with no look at the basket and nothing to do except throw a wild shot in the general direction of the rim. Every one of his four missed 2-pointers was like that.

I lost count, but if I had to guess, the Hornets bit on about 45 DeMar DeRozan pump fakes. The scouting report probably has in all caps bold underlined letters “do not jump at the pump fakes.” The Hornets could not execute that. I believe most if not all of DeRozan’s 10 free throws were the result of getting fouled after pump faking someone into the air 10-15 feet away from the basket.

What’s Next

The Hornets play their penultimate home game Sunday afternoon against the Bulls.