After the All-Star break, the Charlotte Hornets drop one to the Detroit Pistons, 114-108 in overtime Thursdays night. It’s the Hornets fifth straight loss and has only won one game in the month of February. The Hornets were without starting center Cody Zeller again with a quad soreness, they were also without backup center Miles Plumlee who is expected to be out at least two weeks with a second-degree calf strain. Charlotte would close the second quarter on a 24-9 run and lead at halftime, 62-50. Hornets would expand their lead to 18 in the third quarter. But Charlotte would start the fourth quarter missing 14 out of their 15 shots and only scoring four points in the first seven minutes. That’s when Kentavious Caldwell-Pope took over, scoring Detroit’s last 11 points in the quarter and hit a three-pointer with 18 seconds left to tie the game up at 100. Kemba Walker drove to the basket but was forced to pass the ball to Marvin Williams who passed it to Marco Belinelli who missed a three-pointer that would’ve won it. Pistons would start overtime on a 5-0 run and with 55 seconds left in overtime Pope would hit a three to put the Pistons up, 110-102. Detroit never trailed in overtime.
The MVP for the Hornets this game would be Kemba Walker who scored 34 points, grabbed 7 rebounds and dished out 6 assists. Kemba who just finished his first All-Star weekend, where he finished third in the three-point contest and scored 7 points in the All-Star game, looked like he had his swagger back. In the first quarter, he made two amazing passes, one was behind the back to Frank Kaminsky who knocked down the three-pointer. And with last than a minute left in regulation scored last 9 points for the Hornets, on some clutch shots. This game was very similar to the Raptors game a week ago, both games the Hornets play great for three-quarters and had double-digits leads heading into the fourth quarter. Then the offense shuts down in the fourth and Hornets end up losing. When they should be on a two-game winning streak. If Nic Batum could guard one player for about a minute, we would’ve won because Batum was one guarding Pope in the fourth, Kemba kept bailing Nic out with his clutch shots, but Nic could not guard Pope in the fourth quarter. But the two stats that stood out for me this game was Detroit outscoring Charlotte 39-14 in bench points and other than Kemba Walker, Hornets went combined 4-22 in the fourth quarter and overtime was 0-3 from the three-point line. Also, the Hornets are 0-4 in overtime games this year, if anyone was wondering. Hornets leading scorers this game was Nicolas Batum with 18 points 6 rebounds, Frank Kaminsky with 17 points, Marvin Williams with 13 points 7 rebounds and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist with 12 points 14 rebounds. Detroit’s leading scorers for this game was Kentavious Caldwell-Pope with 33 points 9 rebounds, Tobias Harris with 25 points, Marcus Morris with 16 points 8 rebounds and Ish Smith with 16 assists. Charlotte Hornets (24-33) visits Sacramento Kings Saturday, it will be Hornets third of seven straight away games.
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