Charlotte Hornets fall to the Portland Trail Blazers 115-98 Tuesday night. It's Charlotte’s fifth straight loss and Portland’s fourth win in their last five games. Blazers have won nine straight home games against the Hornets. The Hornets were without Cody Zeller again due to quadriceps contusion, Zeller has missed four straight games due to the injury and sounds like the Hornets will be without him tomorrow night when they face-off against the Golden State Warriors. The Hornets are 1-10 this season when he doesn’t play. Portland started the game missing their first eight shots and not scoring in the first three minutes of the game but Lillard would end that with a three-pointer and would go on and score 14 points in the first quarter. Behind, Allen Crabbe 13 points in the second quarter the Blazers would take a 56 to 50 lead at halftime. Portland went on an 11-2 run to start the second half and wouldn’t look back after that. Blazers would lead as much as 24 points and with six minutes left in the game, Steve Clifford decided to put in the scrubs and let them play for the rest of the game.
The MVP for the Hornets this game would be Nicolas Batum with 18 points 8 rebounds 6 assists and 4 turnovers. To be honest with you, everyone for the Hornets played terrible tonight in my opinion so I guess Nic Batum played the least amount of terribleness? Hornets leading scorers were Kemba Walker with 22 points 5 assists, who in the first quarter moved into third place on the Hornets scoring list. Marvin Williams scored 10 points and grabbing 5 rebounds while Marco Belinelli added 6 points off the bench. I know I’ve talked about the lack of bench scoring for the Hornets about a week ago, but I need to bring it up again since tonight’s the Hornets were outscored 50-30 in bench points. That is bad if the Hornets want to make it back to the playoffs this season, they’re going to need to trade for bench scoring because you cannot win with a terrible bench like we do. And with the trade deadline coming up, I’m hoping they make a move to get extra scoring, there plenty of options for them. Also, don’t get why Jeremy Lamb isn’t playing, I know he missed a lot of time due to injury’s but he was cleared to play about a week ago, and tonight was the first time he played and even then, he only played the last six minutes of tonight’s game with the scrubs. Does Clifford not trust him again like last year or is he that out of shape? Portland leading scorers were Damian Lillard with 27 points, who has scored 20-plus points in each of his 10 games against the Hornets. C.J. McCollum scored 18 points while Allen Crabbe scored 21 points off the bench and Mason Plumlee scored 7 points and grabbed 11 rebounds. Charlotte Hornets (23-26) play again tomorrow night against the Golden State Warriors.
