Entering the 2016-17 NBA season, the Charlotte Hornets were a sexy pick to win the Southeast Division. While they had never done it before, the Miami Heat were rebuilding, the Washington Wizards had a suspect bench, and both the Orlando Magic and Atlanta Hawks had revamped their rosters without necessarily improving. Charlotte had made the playoffs the year before, taking the rival Miami Heat to seven games in their first round series, and looked ready to build on that momentum.
For a while, they were. Charlotte was 14-9 through their first 23 games, and likely to garner home-court advantage in the first round. They, unfortunately, were not able to sustain. Charlotte lost on the road to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Dec. 10, 116-105. Losing in Cleveland isn’t a big deal, but the Hornets have gone 9-17 in their last 26 games since that loss. They now have a tenuous hold on the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference playoff race.
A handful of things stand out with the Hornets’ recent decline. The most obvious is that they are no longer winning with defense. The Hornets are much stronger on that side of the ball and their coach, Steve Clifford has proven to be one of the league’s top defensive coaches. When the Hornets are getting stops, they can counterbalance its offensive limitations. However, anything less than being elite defensively exposes their shortcomings. Charlotte is 14th in offensive efficiency, but only ninth in defensive efficiency this season.
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With a finite ceiling offensively, it puts an insane amount of pressure on the team to be tight defensively. That razor-thin margin for error has led to the Hornets losing games in bunches. Charlotte has lost four or more games in a row four times this season. The Hornets are currently riding a season-worst five-game skid. Their streakiness is pretty obvious in this five-game rolling average chart of their net rating.
The other phenomenon at work here is that Charlotte has struggled in tight games. In the month of January, Charlotte was 2-7 in games where the margin was five points or less at any time in the last five minutes. They were outscored by an average of 19 points per 100 possessions during those clutch minutes.
Charlotte has a +1.2 in net rating on the season, but is three games under .500 at 23-26. A team with that point differential would be expected to have a record of 27-22 through 59 games, which would have them in sixth place in the East, right in the thick of things with Atlanta and Washington, both at 28-20. Those close losses are one of the things driving their actual record down as compared to their expected one.
Frankly, the Hornets’ fade has coincided with surges by both the Hawks and the Wizards. While Charlotte has gone 9-17 since Dec. 10, Atlanta is 16-8 and Washington 20-7 over the same stretch of games. Overall, Atlanta and Washington’s rise in recent weeks has masked the narrative of Charlotte’s mid-season swoon. Struggling to win tight ball games and being atrocious on the road has compounded into the Hornets being only a fringe playoff team in the Eastern Conference.
One would think a top-10 defense would be enough to made a team competitive. However for a team with an average offense, it’s not nearly enough. If Charlotte really wants to be a serious threat in the East, their defensive performance has to be elite not just good. And frankly, picking things up on defense is probably more likely than their offense suddenly jumping a notch.
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