Griffin Wong breaks down his analysis, prediction, and pick for Hornets at Nets on Monday.
As the NBA season enters its third month, rumors continue to swirl around one of the NBA’s worst teams. As the Charlotte Hornets flounder their way to what will be their 10th consecutive missed playoffs, point guard LaMelo Ball finds himself in the throes of trade rumors, though it’s unclear what trade value the struggling 24-year-old holds.
Coming off of two straight wins, the Hornets will have a great chance for a third against the Brooklyn Nets when the teams face off for a 7 p.m. ET clash at Barclays Center. After an injury-riddled start to the season, Charlotte is almost fully healthy, while Cam Thomas remains out for Brooklyn.
The Hornets are 4.5-point favorites at DraftKings Sportsbook (-192 on the Moneyline), and the point total is set to 229.5. The Nets are +160 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down tonight’s battle for lottery positioning and offer my prediction.
Charlotte Hornets at Brooklyn Nets preview, prediction
Charlotte won both ends of a back-to-back over the weekend, beating the Chicago Bulls and the Toronto Raptors, marking its first winning streak of the season. In the former, 2023 second overall pick Brandon Miller had a 27-point, three-block masterpiece, another promising sign for arguably the Hornets’ most highly-touted youngster. Besides Miller, veteran Collin Sexton (16.2 points per game) and rookie Kon Knueppel (18.4 points per game on 41.3% three-point shooting) have been among the bright spots in another dark Charlotte season. With the playoffs already slipping away and Ball potentially set to exit, developing Miller and Knueppel will be among the top priorities moving forward.
The good news for the Nets is that Michael Porter Jr. is set to make his return after missing each of the last two games with back soreness. With Thomas injured with a hamstring strain, Porter has been just about Brooklyn’s only source of offense, averaging a career-high 24.3 points per game on fairly efficient shooting. The issue is that none of the Nets’ record five first round picks — Egor Dëmin, Drake Powell, Ben Saraf, Danny Wolf, and Nolan Traoré — has played very much or very well. Third-year man Noah Clowney is arguably the Nets’ most promising young piece, but even his 39-33-80 shooting splits could use some work.
Hornets at Nets pick, best bet
Neither of these teams has much to offer defensively: in the last 11 games, since Thomas went down, Brooklyn has had the league’s fourth-worst defensive rating and the Hornets have been the third-worst on that side of ball. The Nets have also been offensively impotent, posting the fifth-worst offensive rating, while Charlotte has been closer to league-average across that span. The Hornets’ respectability on that side of the ball has made all the difference in the two teams’ records: they’re 3-8 in their last 11 games, while Brooklyn is 2-9. Charlotte should continue to have the edge offensively now that Miller is back, given that its offense has been 4.6 points per 100 possessions better this season with the 23-year-old on the floor.
One key for the Hornets will be getting downhill. The Nets have had awful rim protection, allowing the seventh-most attempts inside the restricted area and the sixth-highest percentage on such shots. They’ve also allowed a 46.5% mark in the non-restricted paint. Since Miller’s return, Charlotte has done a decent job at the rim, finishing at the 12th-highest clip on such shots. That trend should be fairly sustainable: rookie center Ryan Kalkbrenner has made 80.5% of his shots this season and helped limit opponents to the 13th-lowest percentage on restricted-area tries. As a result, the Hornets far out-pace Brooklyn in points in the paint, though each has ranked in the league’s bottom seven in paint points allowed. Charlotte has also scored more second chance points.
Both teams have gotten almost equally unlucky. Opponents have nailed an unsustainable 44.9% of their wide-open triples against the Nets, the highest rate in the league, but the Hornets rank second in that category, conceding 43.3%. Offensively, neither team has shot particularly well on uncontested looks. Thus, any shooting luck normalization should favor Charlotte, which has generated the sixth-most wide-open threes per game and allowed the fifth-fewest. By contrast, Brooklyn has attempted the fewest unguarded treys and allowed the 15th-most. It’ll require quite a bit of luck for the Nets to overcome such a deficit in shot diet, especially since the Hornets have fouled less than any other team in the league and snagged the 10th-most offensive rebounds.
The fact that the game is at Barclays Center might actually hurt Brooklyn, which is the only team yet to win a home game this season and where it has a net rating 3.4 points per 100 possessions worse. Meanwhile, while the Hornets have only managed one win on the road, their net rating is a reasonable minus-5.8, good for an expected winning percentage 25 percentage points higher than the actual 1-8 mark that they’ve posted. Charlotte should post its third straight victory and quell some of the discussion surrounding Ball.
Best bet: Charlotte Hornets -4.5 (-110)