NBAE
Charlotte Hornets forward Miles Bridges drives to the basket as the Phoenix Suns’ Royce O’Neal contests in the Hornets’ 127-07 win April 2, 2026 at Spectrum Center. The Hornets improved to 41-36 with five games remaining in the regular season.
The Charlotte Hornets look different in 2025-26.
Of course, they are winning games and healthy most of the season. But what has been one of the main catalysts has been their defensive intensity. Thursday’s 127-107 win over the Phoenix Suns, for example, doesn’t truly tell the story. The Suns scored 41 points in the first quarter alone but Charlotte (41-36) held them to just 66 points over the remaining three.
“Great job by our team to have a much better second quarter response than the first quarter,” Hornets coach Charles Lee said. “Too many moments of not locking into tendencies, having an active [center] at the rim to help protect the paint, just a lot of our defensive principles and who we are and the habits we built weren’t there in the first quarter, especially consistently enough.”
Lee credited the team but highlighted two players he thought particularly excelled on the defensive side to help stymie the Suns’ offense.
“Credit the team, but to [point] out Sion [James] and Ryan Kalkbrenner,” Lee said, “I thought that their defensive physicality, their focus on Devin Booker’s tendencies [were key]. Sion picks up a foul here or there, but he does a great job of moving on to the next play and responding to hold Booker to one free throw tonight is a great effort. It’s mental focus. It’s a great job by the whole team collectively to be locked in on his tendencies.”
The Hornets have keyed in on defense, really all season, but in games against some of the NBA’s more physical teams, they’ve excelled. Charlotte has held opponents under 100 points in 17 games this season compared to last season where they did so just 10 times, and seven the year prior.
The defense is trending in the right direction and has the Hornets sitting with their best record since 2021-22 with a chance to top that season with five games remaining. You’d have to go back to 2015-16 – the last time Charlotte made the playoffs – to find a better record at 48-34.
“It was great for our team to come out with a victory,” Lee said, “but I think also to be able to combat that physicality, there’s a ton of growth that we made in a lot of moments tonight to not lose our minds and lose our focus on what the ultimate goal is, which is building winning habits and the togetherness and focusing on us. And I thought our group did that at a really high level.”
Charlotte is locked into an NBA play-in spot at worst and 1.5 games behind Toronto and Philadelphia in seventh and sixth respectively. They would likely need some help to move into sixth. Orlando and Miami are a half game and one game behind Charlotte in ninth and 10th.
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