What: Charlotte Hornets (7-26) (2-13 away) at Cleveland Cavaliers (30-4) (17-1 home)
When: 6:00pm Eastern
Where: Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse; Cleveland, OH
How to watch: FanDuel Sports Network, NBA League Pass
Outfitting: Hornets–Association (white), Cavs-Icon (wine)
Game Lines: Hornets +15.5, Hornets money line +750, O/U 222.5
Injuries:
Hornets: Josh Green-probable (shoulder), LaMelo Ball-questionable (ankle/wrist), Brandon Miller-questionable (ankle), DaQuan Jeffries-questionable (adductor), Tre Mann-out (back), Grant Williams-out (knee)
Cavs: Sam Merrill-questionable (ankle), Isaac Okoro-out (shoulder)
I don’t think anyone expected the Cavs to be here. They started hot, which wasn’t all that surprising since they were supposed to be pretty good. Pretty good teams have unsustainably good stretches of play sometimes. I think that’s what we thought was happening. Everyone was waiting for the regression to the mean. We’re 34 games into the season, and that regression hasn’t happened. The Cavs are 30-4. They’ve won nine in a row and 13 of their last 14. They’re just really good.
They’ve gotten here by being the best offense in the league with a pretty good defense. They simply do not miss shots. They’ve connected on over 50% of their field goal attempts and over 40% of their 3-point season. It’s truly incredible to see an entire team attain that kind of shooting efficiency. They’re shooting almost as well from three (40.6%) as the Hornets are from the field (42.6%).
Despite being wholly overmatched, the Hornets have been decently competitive in their two meetings against the Cavs this season. They lost both games by exactly 14 points but had the game within two possessions at some point in the fourth quarter of each game. Both times they fell apart in the final five minutes or so, but they’d be pretty competitive if these were 40 minute games.
The Hornets will probably eventually get Brandon Miller and LaMelo Ball back. Maybe today is that day. It’d be cool to see the Hornets to come out and pull off one of the biggest upsets of the season, especially since it would come on the same day as the final week of the NFL season that will steal all of the national sports time. But if there were ever the time for the Hornets to do something like that, it would be a time like now.
