Hornets Split Weekend: Rookies Shine in Win vs. Jazz, LaMelo Ball Injury Update

Hornets Split Weekend: Rookies Shine in Win vs. Jazz, LaMelo Ball Injury Update

The Hornets split the weekend. Do we feel like overall it was a successful weekend that saw LaMelo play a game while on the injury report and miss a game while on the injury report? The rookies are all right. We’ll get to all of it today. Locked on Hornets. You are Locked on Hornets, your daily Charlotte Hornets podcast, part of the Locked On network. Your team every day. in a minute cuz we live. [Music] It’s Locked On Hornets, part of the Locked On podcast network. It’s your team every day. Thanks for making us your first listen. We’re free and available anywhere you get your pods, and that includes YouTube. There’s Doug Branson. You can find him on his Substack, every hornetsboxcore.com. You can also find him looking GQ as hell, by the way. I love the beard. I think this is a great look for you. I think this is the best that you’ve ever looked. I’m just going to throw that compliment your way. Nice job, Doug. Everybody needs to come check it out on YouTube. I appreciate it. I think I’ve had as many looks on this show as lineups that Lee has thrown out there. You’ve had a lot. How about the How about the the the lettuce lineup where you have had it go all the way down to your shoulders, maybe even a little bit longer with all of the beard, some lettuce, no beard combos. You’ve had a lot of lineups. Charles Lee would approve. I’m Walker Mail. Listen to me. WFNZ every weekday from 12 to 300 PM. This episode, by the way, it’s brought to you by Game Time. Game time. Game time. Download the Game Time app. Create an account. Use code lockdown NBA for $20 off your first purchase. So, the Hornets, they lose to the Timberwolves 122 to 105 on Saturday. That’s when LaMelo Ball showed up on the injury report for right ankle impingement. After seeing that injury report, we would never see him play last year when he had impingement and he was listed um as being hurt going into a given game. I thought, all right, perhaps this is going to be a big game time decision. He hadn’t played once we all found out that he had impeachment, hadn’t played, and this is the time that he does. On the other hand, he doesn’t play last night against the Jazz where the Hornets did pick up the win, and they were in control of this one really from the get-go. They win by 14 points in the first quarter and really again it was they were in control the rest of the way 126 to 103 but LaMelo didn’t play in that game. It was the rookies that stepped up and they’ve been awesome. I mean they deserve a lot of this breakdown episode. They deserve a lot of attention from us here Doug. But overall what were your thoughts on the weekend? Well I thought that it really illustrated the Hornets ability to beat teams that they should beat. And when I say that, I don’t really even indicate record or talent. I really mean teams that can’t play defense. Like the teams that struggle to play defense, teams that are not physical. And they’ve struggled against teams that are bigger, stronger, and more physical. And I think that that’s going to be a trend that continues at least until they get Grant Williams, possibly Josh Green, um, and certainly Brandon Miller. You get those guys back into the fold, it’s going to help you create advantages offensively that you can’t create right now. it’s going to give you an opportunity to defend uh where they haven’t been able to defend in certain situations. Uh but you know, you’re also counting on guys like Seion James and uh Khan Caniple to and Cochrinter to continue to upskill very quickly. Um that that’s that’s going to only help, but that’s just going to take I think almost an entire season’s worth of development to really see uh that kind of effect on the win loss record when it comes to those types of games. But, you know, as long as they can keep playing these teams, they they’ve got the New Orleans Pelicans up uh up next and they’re at the bottom of the league in terms of defense. Uh so, that should be a good matchup as well. At least they’re taking those games seriously. The I think a lot of it is like the effort is there. It’s just they keep running into these walls of, oh yeah, like we just don’t have the bodies and it can kind of snowball on them in terms of their ability to generate enough offense to compensate for the fact that they don’t have the weapons defensively that other teams have. Yeah, I think this is what you’re looking at. The teams that you are supposed to be better than, they’ve taken advantage of those on paper wins. I’m glad that they’ve actually allowed those wins to become reality. And then if they aren’t better than a team on paper, they’ve shown us that that is in fact the case. They lose to Orlando. Even if with even with them struggling coming into that game last week, uh they were beaten up quite badly as you mentioned in your pod where they got bullied. Miami, same thing. Miami was getting out in transition, how that game looked on paper, kind of how it played out too. Miami got the best of the Hornets with what they had been doing well coming into that game. And then against Utah, I will say, I mean, Utah wasn’t playing as poorly as I think most people believed that they would. And the Hornets just right out of the gate let them know, we’re not going to let you win, even if it is the second night of a backtoback. We’re not going to let you beat us at the Spectrum Center. And it’s the rookies, Doug. I mean, it’s getting pretty ridiculous now. And I was thinking about it just if you look at what Khan is doing, what Seion is doing, and what Ryan Cochrren is doing. Khan Canipple fourth overall pick. Seion James, Ryan Cochr Brener, your two early but two second round picks. Okay. If you were to just go down the list of the best rookies that have suited up for the Hornets, I think you would have in one room Khan, Seion, and Caulk Briner. And then in the separate room, you keep going down the list, you would have LaMelo, Brandon, and Mark, where they’re all your first round picks from the last few years. You might debate Mark. Do you want to go I don’t know who the second round pick would be. Do you have to go all the way back to PJ if that’s the case? the the way that they’re playing right now, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical that they can keep this up as the season goes on if you wanted to be skeptical. But man, they look pretty good. Two of these guys are older basketball players, so you have to account for that. Still, nobody was talking about James looking this good this early. Just it feels weird to rely on the rookies for them to be among your best lineups. Like looking at the point per possession data offensively and defensively, Doug, a lot of the times the best lineups include Yep. Don Canipple, Seion James, and Ryan Cochr Brener. It can’t go understated just how impressive they’ve been. Look, we talk about the low bar a lot. We we are owners, co-owners of the low bar, and the low bar for rookies in this franchise right now is can you belong on a basketball floor? And are you about the right things? And those seem like very simple things, simple bars to clear, but Hornets rookies of of the past have not been able to consistently clear those bars. Right now, you’re seeing Seion James with his offense, his ability. I mean, the the big difference in the Utah game or the new thing that that really stood out to me was his ability to just drive into the defense and finish with authority and speed and power. But he’s been shooting well. And then the def his defense was incredible. Charles Lee says, “I trust this guy to defend one through five.” That’s incredible. Ton’s going to G-League right now going to the Greensboro Swarm. Part of that’s on Ton, but part of that is just like Seion James. Hey, you can guard force and you know exactly where to be on offense all the time. So, you know, step on up. Let’s go. So, yeah. I mean, the the ability for them to trust these guys, I think, is the big thing. Khan Canipple more assertive in this game and now it’s like hey Khan be more assertive when LaMelo’s on the floor. Hey Miles g get your head down and get to the free throw line when LaMelo is on the floor. A lot of the stuff that they did well in this Utah game now the big challenge for all of these guys is hey keep that same energy when the best player is on the floor so that the best player doesn’t feel pressure to have to take control of the game. Yeah, let’s continue to talk about it. Coming up next on the Locked on Hornets podcast everywhere. Miles with 29 points. We’ll dive a little bit deeper into what Khan showed us against Utah. And then we have Siko celebrations. That’s all coming up next. Lockdown Hornets. [Music] This episode is brought to you by Robin Hood. Your ambition, it just met its match. With Robin Hood, you play for the win. Not just on game day, but every day, locking in on every opening, beating your PR, beating it again, and then you can channel that drive into your money. Robin Hood puts you in control of your money. You can trade stocks, ETFs, options, futures, and crypto all in one platform. You can now build and execute your own trades from a desktop. With Robin Hood Legends advanced tools or take advantage of the new Robin Hood strategies with a tailored portfolio managed by a team of experts. You expect more from yourself. Expect more from your money. Get started today at robinhood.com/youoney. Again, that’s robinhood.com/youmoney. Your money your move. This episode is also brought to you by Game Time. Game time. Game time. Basketball season is officially here. Nothing beats being in the arena for those opening games. But let’s be real, getting tickets can be a total headache between waiting in cues, surprise fees, and prices that jump right before checkout. It’s easy to get frustrated when all you want to do is cheer on your team. That’s where Game Time comes in. The app that gives fans the advantage. It’s your ultimate life hack for scoring amazing NBA tickets fast, easy, and stress-free. They have zone deals, which are a gamecher. You pick the section, game time, pick your seats, and you save big. And you can even find NBA tickets for under $25. It’s a nice deal. Take the guesswork out of buying NBA tickets with Game Time. Download the Game Time app. Create an account. Use code locked on NBA for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, that’s code Loca. Locked on NBA for $20 off. Swipe, tap, ticket, go. Go to the next segment on Lockdown Hornets. Miles had been struggling over the last few games heading into this weekend. Doug, I did ask Charles Lee about that. Hey, is it more so just being a make or miss league? Is there something that he’s doing that’s not allowing him to reach above that 40% threshold overall? Because he had a weird stat to open up the year. The first five games of the season, Miles had only made six field goals in each of those games. No less, no more. So just six was the magic number. finally broke that over the weekend and it did feel like Miles locked in. He gave us the social media post that he does I don’t know multiple times a year. He gave it to us like two times a year with the message, hey, got to lock in, embrace adversity. Was was was this one? As soon as he puts it out, Miles starts to change a little bit and he started to knock down shots. What did you think of Miles performance over the weekend and especially against Utah where he had 29 points? Yeah, I thought uh you know the points are great would be would would be the message there. Um but I I think the assists are also important. He was creating for others. So was Khan. You had Colin Ston with a double double 12 assists. I thought Colin was pressing a little bit early in the game. looked like prototypical guy who wanted to go out there and beat his old team and was fumbling the basketball a little bit, turning it over a little bit too much and he settled down in the second half and started to play a better brand of basketball. Um, so yeah, I I thought Miles understood the assignment. LaMelo’s out. I have to take command. I thought he did so early, which is good. Like you don’t want you don’t want your best player on the floor, which is what Miles represented. You don’t want him to completely shy away and leave it up to Khan to set the tone, although he did 17 points in the first half. Uh, but, you know, I think Miles did a great job of getting everyone on the same page, holding everyone accountable, holding himself accountable, and they got the win here. They did. They got the win. It was much needed, too. I think you would have lost a lot of good grace, which was already starting to fly out the window as you were losing these games. But if you lose to Utah at home, that would have been a four-game losing streak. We had already built up enough built up enough good grace after you had the wins against Brooklyn and Washington. You didn’t want a fourth straight loss, even if it was on the second night of a backto-back. Both of these games over the weekend were at home. And you had a real chance to capitalize. So, okay, you lose to Minnesota. They’re supposed to be a good basketball team this year, but they didn’t have Anthony Edwards. Okay, you lose to Miami. Heat Culture, Spo, they’re a respected organization. We don’t like them around these parts, but also they didn’t have Tyler Hero. So, even these teams, they weren’t at full strength and you were losing by double digits. One thing that’s a little different with the losses this year than last year, remember we commended Charles for not having his team get blown out of the water until that wild four-game stretch, like right before the All-Star break when they lost by 40 a few games in a row. Okay, that was bad. Before that, when they lost, they were pretty much competitive every single game, and that’s not really an exaggeration. They were competitive in some of these losses early, but the margin of victory for the opposition got a little out of hand with some of these teams. I’m I’m I think this was a nice win to bring back the good vibes that we had after the first three games or so where, okay, the rookies, they’re playing really well. We do have a win against the team that we’re supposed to get that win against and we beat them handily. So that’s that’s three victories where we’ve won handily. It felt like a protecting the good graces type of victory that they got against Utah. Yeah, shot making really important here. Utah didn’t do a lot of it particularly at the beginning of this game. Uh Lowry Markin really the only uh Utah Jazz player that could hit anything. We didn’t see Ace Bailey. Uh didn’t see him a lot in the first half and and saw him kind of sparingly and then wasn’t really impressive to me in his time on the floor in in all honesty. Didn’t see a lot of He looked very excited when he was on ball. When he was on ball, he looked very excited. When he was off ball, he didn’t look very excited. Yeah. Um but yeah, man. So so many contributions in this game from so many guys. And I thought the there were two things that stood out to me. One was how often Hornets ball handlers were able to get by their man and into the middle of the floor and then make great decisions. It was Khan, it was Seion, it was Miles, it was Colin. Everybody was making uh great decisions. Hornets attempted 12 corner threes in this game, hit seven of them. There’s the shot making, but also the shot generation. On the other side, Utah only able to generate five of those corner looks. They were playing inside out. I think against those tougher defenses, they tended to play inside in. They would, and I I texted you this when you were on the radio doing the pregame show, they had to make better paint decisions. They were too often going straight at Rudy Gobear or uh you know, going right at uh Bam Adabio when he was just sitting in the paint waiting on them. Like they were just making bad paint decisions. In this one, the paint decisions were easier because it was against Utah and there was no Walker Kesler to deal with. He was out of this game, but they made the good paint decisions when they were when when they were available to them. And I I thought it was a big reason why they get the win. The other thing is for all of those people that have been on uh Charles Lee’s you know what about these rotations. Yeah. I I thought he made a great adjustment getting Pat Coneton in this game. The con to connection, the con to con connection was amazing in this game. I mean, they were finding each other for shots. It meant less time for Ton, which I think was a benefit to the offense at this time. And uh yeah, I thought it was a a good call to unleash the Conetan. Well, okay, here’s something else in favor of Charles Lee, too. you know that most offenses or a lot of offenses in the league, they’re going to try to generate a decent amount of corner threes because it’s considered to be analytically one of the most efficient shots. And the Hornets have struggled at that mightily for seemingly forever now. It has been a long time since you can go back and say the Hornets were one of the best or just even average at taking corner threes, but really it’s hitting the corner threes this year. Doug Branson, according to Cleaning the Glass, they are fourth in frequency. They’re fourth in frequency taking corner threes. They are third in accuracy. Let’s go. So, they’re shooting a lot of those shots and they’re making a lot of those shots. Just for reference, all all we’ll do is go back just one year ago, but in 2024 and 2025 when it came to the frequency shooting from the corner, they weren’t terrible. They were 16th. So right there average in terms of how many times they were shooting, but boy, they’re pretty terrible at hitting them, they were 25th. That you can see a pretty similar trend every year you go back, especially with the accuracy, man. They just couldn’t hit a whole bunch of corner threes. This year, it’s very different. You love to see it. And I think grabbing some of these rookies that you did, also Miles doing a really nice job hitting his corner threes, even if the three-point field goal percentage overall hasn’t been all that great, you are generating and hitting the right kind of shots. Yeah, I’m sure you can think of a couple of names here, but the one name that comes to mind that sort of just encapsulates the problem that the Hornets had um in terms of trusting the corner three and generating the corner three and having the ball go to the corner and not immediately cringe. Your body sees seizes up. For me, that name is Dennis Smith Jr. Like how many times the ball found DSJ in the corner and you were like, “Oh no.” It was like a brief stretch where he could hit it, but then it was just murder after that. I mean, Cody Martin went through stretches of that, too. Um, outside of his like crazy outlier year when he was knocking down threes left and right. Uh, but yeah, a lot of names like that on the Hornets Ro. I mean, yeah, Josh Green would hit them, so I’m not even going to include him. He just didn’t take a lot. Just right. That that’s the thing. He just didn’t take a lot. Yeah. I mean, Khan Caniple is hitting him. He has 12 points from the uh right side of the court. And then just just corner in general, these guys that are hitting a bunch of their threes. I’m filtering it right now just to make sure I’m correct on this. Miles has 18 points on corner threes. Khan has 21 uh 21 shooting 54%. LaMelo very limited generated shots from that area of the floor, but is shooting 50%. Maybe that’s something you experiment more with LaMelo offball. Some action there. So I it’s just it’s very different. We’re very nerdy. We’re very in the weeds on that specific part of the court, but it’s just been something that’s plagued the Hornets forever. And it’s a pretty important shot on the basketball court. Well, any three-point shot is an important shot in today’s NBA. And especially so for the Hornets that need to outscore teams. Like if you look at their three-point attempt rate over the past several games, three of which they played against good defenses and one in which in this Utah game they didn’t. Like the the difference is stark. They have not been able to generate enough three-point shots. And certainly, I think if you dug down and looked at the quality of those shots against Orlando, Miami, Minnesota, the quality would not be very good. In this game, nearly every three they took was high quality. Yes, that’s just as much reflective of their ball movement as it was Utah’s inability. I mean, they were in constant scramble mode. You would see just two guy. It looked like what is it? Uh Swan Lake. What’s the big ballet? Like it looked like ballet at times where guys were just pleaing uh from the three-point line out just a complete It looked like a video game glitch at times where two guys were doing the exact same thing both like flying way past the ball handler. It was crazy man. Utah that was a tough watch. Um I like it. No, I don’t know about ballet by the way. I don’t know anything about Barishnikov. Why do you ask? Coming up next on the Lockdown Hornets podcast. Is that an international player? He’s the coach for uh everywhere. Is it Memphis now or Phoenix? Yeah, I forget who it is. All right, coming up next on the Lockdown Hornets podcast, we have Siko Celebrations. We’ll dive a little bit more into what we’ve seen from the Hornets over the past two games. That’s all still to come. LOH. [Music] This episode is brought to you by Rouette. Let’s be real, making excuses doesn’t solve anything. We’ve all heard them before. It’s just stress. I’m tired. Or it happens to everyone sometimes. But when it comes to performance, sometimes your body just needs a little extra support. And that’s where Rouette comes in. Rouette.com offers fast acting, doctor prescribed treatment for ED designed to help you stop making excuses and start making moves. Rouette makes it easy to get started. You just connect with a board-certified doctor, 100% online. No awkward waiting rooms, no in-person appointments. If prescribed, your treatment ships discreetly straight to your door. The process is fast, it’s simple, it’s private, and it’s all handled by real doctors. It’s about confidence, connection, and getting back to the moments that matter. Visit ruget rougeette.com/lockedonba to get 15% off your first order. That’s rugged.com/lockedonba. And don’t forget to use our code lockdown NBA so they know that we sent you. Roette, stop making excuses and start making moves. More Lockdown Hornets ahead. Sicko Celebration, you take the wheel here, Doug. Where you want to go? I want to go to the Siko Brigade. Join subtext.comlockonhornets if you want to join. So, this is something new that I’ve been starting after games. is either the sicko celebration if they win or the sicko vent session if they lose. It’s just an opportunity for us to text back and forth and to share uh the celebrations of the lamentations on this podcast. So, the first one is going to come from Yo-Yo. I’m just going to read these and then you respond and then I’ll read the next one because I need some time to pull up each of these. So, the first one from Yo-Yo here is Seion James plays like he’s been there. He and Caulk from the jump. Useful rotation players in the second round. Celebration. Yeah, huge celebration. I think I saw, God, I forget who the guy was that tweeted this out, but so much of uh being successful as a rookie, especially as a big guy, is not trying to do too much and just understanding your role right away and giving 110% within the confines of that role. Ryan Kriner mentioned that. I even talked to him about it on Thursday when I interviewed him and asked him about what was the ridiculous field goal percentage. It was 90 and a half going into that game against Orlando. And all he did was go eight of nine from the field against the Magic. And he said, “Look, one, I’m 7T and I have a 7 foot6 wingspan. So, I should be able to hit all of these shots at the rim, but also, man, that sells him short for great touch.” And then I asked him if he has the green light to shoot threes. And he said, he dodged the question. He’s like, “Look, I’m just trying to focus on the fundamentals right now. That’s not me in the moment. I just need to focus on what I’m supposed to do.” And so he really is honing in on exactly what he’s being asked to do. And so is Cion for that matter. Hit open threes. Check. Take them. Check. And play maniacal defense on ball, off ball, dive for the loose balls, all of it. Check. Those guys know their roles, man. Khan, not too dissimilar. It’s just we expect more from him as a fourth overall pick. But they’ve all been incredible. There will be time for that evolution for Caulk Briner. He’s practicing it. The the team knows whether he can do it or not. Uh, I did someone did tap on on my shoulder. I think it was Evan from my my guy from Evus Boxcore. Uh, someone in the chat uh during that Utah game said that they were watching uh Nick Richards in Phoenix and he pulled up and hit a three. I’m like, you son of a brought it out late. He’s hiding his three-point shot in a cactus apparently. Not a bushel, but a cactus. Good lord. All right, more celebrations. I’m going to get some music. I’m going to produce some music for this uh segment. It needs some like like some club music. Andrew from the 31st Rambis Brigade says, “Everyone was passing. Everyone was rebounding. They were 22 of 22 from the line.” I mean, how bad did EC want that record? He was thirsty for that free throw record. He really was. This is what has been a I don’t know. It’s definitely been a big difference from what we saw in the second half of last year, but I mean, Doug, they’re getting 30 assists pretty frequently. You know, you saw them at the beginning of the season. I think in the first three games, they reached the 30 assist threshold in every single one of those outings. They fell short of that against Miami. And part of that, of course, is just missing some shots, but it still was 26 against Miami. That was nice. Against the Jazz, they accumulated um we’re scrolling here. Yeah, 31. Like I you’re getting a lot of assists, man. And this is what you want to see from this type of offense. I think we hypothesized it coming in. The Gene Hackman coaching Hooers Norman Dale pop pop. We want it to pop pop. It’s popping like popcorn out there and I love to see it. All right. Lynn Sananity Len Lenanity from the 55th Airbnb Brigade says this. Had to watch the game twice. My goodness. I think we might be okay. The sting of seeing the stars out, but I feel good that the depth and the strategy held firm. This is what Sexton was brought in for. I might be overreacting, but I don’t know if the Jazz are still overtly bad. Well, I think Lynn, I think they’re overtly I think they’re real bad. They’re going to try. They’re trying to be overtly bad. You know, I’m gonna give I’m gonna put everybody up on game in the content business because my guy Lensanity, I hope that’s for Alex Lensanity, by the way, if there is such a thing. But my guy Lens Sananity, he’s not wrong when he says he’s enjoying watching these g this game twice where you see all of the rookies suit up. But putting y’all up on game and the content business is everybody loves rookies, myself included. I’m listening to all of the content that I can get when people want to talk about rookies and specifically my rookies. So when they all ball out like that, when Caulk Brener is giving you the stocks, when Khan Canipple is going for a season turned career high and Cion James is hitting all these threes, you bet I want to watch the future right now. And so my man Linsanity, he goes back and watches the future right now. It’s a total cheat code in the content game, but for good reason because especially with this rookie class, they’re giving you a lot of hope. Well, look, you can take for granted what what’s going on with Charlotte right now, but the easy way not to do that is look at what’s happening in Utah. Utah is also leaning on a lot of youth and inexperience. Um, and they are not they are not playing as well as Charlotte is. They are going to have to get super hard to super hot to win. By the way, uh just adding to the confusion of the Colin Ston trade for Utah, the idea was to give all of these young players all the minutes in the world and then oh well, we need Ace Bailey to have the basketball in his hands. Yeah, he’s played the most 23 minutes against Phoenix and every other timeout has been 20 or less. They just Okay. All right, fine. You wonder You wonder what’s going on there in Utah. We’ll see. They had some folks out, too. Isaiah Collier uh looked like he was on a G-League assignment for an injury st. So yeah. Oh well that that Yeah. Well and oh yeah, we need to clear out we need to get the basketball out of Collins hands so we can put it in Ace Bailey’s for the 15 minutes we’re going to play him. Yeah, that’s that’s what we want to do. Look, I’m not saying that I totally buy into the Colin Sexon trade was about Ace Bailey uh conspiracy theory, but I also don’t I’m not totally not buying it. Okay, that’s all I’m saying. Uh final one here. This is from uh the one, the only Bam Bam of the 21st Ricky Pierce division, aka the Flying Big Paper Daddies. He says very simply, “Good morning, ball movement.” It’s my favorite sick that I’ve heard. Ball movement. How about we just say good night ball movement. That’ll do it for Locked On Hornets. Thanks for making us your first listen. We’re free. We’re available anywhere you get your podcast. That includes YouTube. Doug Branson, he’s looking great, folks. If you’re listening to us on Apple or Spotify, we appreciate that. But you need to check out the new look for Doug. He looks fantastic. Every hornetsbox.com. Also check out Yahoo Sports Daily where you don’t get to see him, but know he’s behind the scenes. He’s producing Yahoo Sports Daily with Jason Fitz and Caroline Finton. I’m Walker Mail. Listen to me. WFNZ every weekday from 12:00 to 3:00 p.m. Have a great rest of your day. We’ll be back with you tomorrow. You look great as well. Thanks. [Music] Hey, [Music]

The team had an up-and-down weekend, splitting their two home games. The first contest was a 122-105 loss to the physical Minnesota Timberwolves , a game where LaMelo Ball played despite a new right ankle impingement injury. This loss reinforced a trend: this team struggles against bigger, stronger opponents, especially while missing Grant Williams and Brandon Miller.

However, in the second game, LaMelo sat out , and the team responded beautifully with a 126-103 win over the Utah Jazz. The rookies were the story of the night. Sion James showed his two-way ability, Kon Knueppel was more assertive, and Ryan Kalkbrenner continued his hyper-efficient play by focusing on his role .

It wasn’t just the rookies; Miles Bridges looked “locked in” after a social media post, dropping 29 points and getting to the free-throw line. Collin Sexton also had a 12-assist double-double against his former team.

We’ll examine the team’s impressive ball movement (31 assists) and a key analytic shift: the Hornets are now elite in both generating and hitting corner threes, ranking 3rd in the NBA in accuracy. We also share some “Sicko Celebrations” from the fans.

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Gametime
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FanDuel
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#Hornets #LaMelo #LaMeloBall #CharlotteHornets