What: Charlotte Hornets (3-6) (2-3 home) vs Boston Celtics (6-2) (1-2 away)
When: 7:00pm Eastern
Where: Spectrum Center; Charlotte, NC
How to watch: Local TV (WSOC in Charlotte), DAZN, NBA League Pass
Outfitting: Hornets–Statement (purple), Celtics–Association (white)
Game Lines: Hornets +8.5, Hornets money line +276, O/U 210.5
Injuries:
Hornets: Moussa Diabate-questionable (quad), Dennis Schroder-questionable (soreness), Kon Knueppel-out (hamstring), Grant Williams-out (hamstring), Hannes Steinbach and Christian Anderson-out (G League assignment)
Celtics: Payton Pritchard-questionable (eye)
Boy has this season started badly, huh? The uneasiness that Hornets fans carried into this season has turned into ire as pretty much nothing as gone in the Hornets favor and everything has gone wrong. No one can shoot. People getting banged up. Kon Knueppel played like five minutes before aggravating the hamstring injury that kept him out of training camp through the first few weeks of the season. The Hornets have lost five straight games and now have to host a Celtics team that has championship aspirations. This part probably doesn’t mean anything, but the Hornets have also averaged 80 points in their two Friday games so far this season. Everything is pointing to a beatdown.
I don’t really have any way to provide optimism that this game is going to go well. At some point, the shooting has to return towards its mean, which is going to pull the Hornets out of the bottom of the league offensively. There’s just no telling when that’s going to happen. The Celtics made their own controversial trade in the offseason by offloading Jaylen Brown for Paul George and a surprisingly small chest of draft capital. Still, they haven’t missed a beat. They’re top 10 in the NBA in both offensive and defensive rating. Jayson Tatum is averaging 27 points per game, though he’s struggled a little bit with his shot. He’s also averaging six rebounds and nearly eight assists per game. Paul George is also averaging over 20 points per game and seems like a smoother personality fit than Jaylen Brown was.
The rest of the Celtics roster looks the same as it pretty much always has under the current regime. They have Payton Pritchard and Derrick White as the scrappy guards, some shooters to space the floor, and Neemias Queta and Mitchell Robinson to gobble up any offensive rebounds that come their way. Luka Garza has also joined the fray as a rebounding threat that’s also making over half his threes.
This is an NBA Cup game, so it means a little more. The Hornets lost their first cup game 95-79, so they absolutely have to win this one if they have any aspirations of making it to the knockout stage.
