Ten games to go.
The Charlotte Hornets are now just 10 games away from the end of their regular season on April 12, which in recent seasons has meant that the crowds are paltry, the team is irrelevant and everyone is just ready to get the slog over with.
Not so this year. With Charlotte’s 134-90 blowout win over Sacramento on Tuesday night, the Hornets (38-34) won for the 22nd time in their past 28 games. They remain one of the hottest teams in the NBA, and their games are an embarrassment of riches compared to what late March and April NBA contests usually feel like around here. I mean, they sold out a Sacramento game. On a Tuesday.
On Jan. 21, this team was 16-28 and sinking like a brick toward the bottom.
Now they are headed toward the play-in tournament or, quite possibly, the actual NBA playoffs. (They haven’t been there since 2016, the longest current non-playoff streak in the NBA.) Charlotte is going to finish somewhere between sixth and 10th in the Eastern Conference — the standings pinball around every day, but no one is consistently playing better than the Hornets.
What a fun team Charlotte has become. Play-by-play man Eric Collins finally has a team worthy of his enthusiasm.
Sacramento (19-54) reminds me of what the Hornets have often been at the end of the past 10 seasons — banged up and brutal to watch. In fact, the Kings have won exactly as many games this season as Charlotte did last season. Sacramento was the Washington Generals to the Hornets’ Harlem Globetrotters on Tuesday night — Charlotte seemed to toy with a hapless Sacramento team that just wanted to get out of the Queen City.
And that 44-point home victory was with Brandon Miller having a poor shooting night (5 of 15, 13 points). It didn’t matter. With the addition of sixth man Coby White (27 points), the Hornets boast so many scoring options now that they can survive off nights by LaMelo Ball, Kon Knueppel, Miller, Miles Bridges or White, as long as at least a couple of them are still on.
Charlotte flirted with the team record for made three-pointers in a game Tuesday. Charlotte had 22 treys after three quarters, but pulled all the starters in the fourth quarter and slowed down a little, finishing with 26 treys to tie an all-time team record.
Coach Charles Lee only had to play LaMelo Ball for an efficient 23 minutes, and Ball finished with 20 points and eight assists. In fact, no starter played more than 27 minutes.
Said Lee on Tuesday after the game, of the Hornets grappling for playoff position: “Our total team approach is an ‘every day is meaningful’ approach. Not taking anything for granted. … If we are fortunate enough to be in that position, we’ll be prepared for whatever that moment looks like. No, we don’t talk about it. I think that talk is cheap. The biggest thing we can do is have the actions that help us either get to that point or be ready for that point.”
Agreed Hornets center Moussa Diabate, who had 17 points and 11 rebounds against the Kings: “Coach says it every day. Don’t focus on what’s going to happen in a week or two. Just focus on what’s going to happen tomorrow.”
Of Charlotte’s final 10 games, six are at home. It won’t be easy — the Sacramento game was really the only sure win the Hornets had left. Whatever they get, they’re going to earn. But with the way they’re playing at the moment, it sure looks like they’re going to earn something.
