‘Just bad basketball.’ Only two games in, Charlotte Hornets coach Clifford gets angry
Only two games into an 82-game season, Charlotte coach Steve Clifford got heated about his Charlotte Hornets.
After New Orleans led the entire game and beat the Hornets, 124-112, in Charlotte’s home opener Friday night, Clifford reminded everyone that he can get unhappy in a hurry when his teams don’t play the way he wants them to.
In the course of his seven-minute news conference after the game, Clifford used the words “careless,” “undisciplined,” “just crazy” and “just bad basketball” to describe the Hornets’ early turnovers and, most of all, the series of fouls they committed against a Pelicans team that outmuscled them in the post before a sellout crowd of 19,287 at Spectrum Center.
Charlotte big men Mason Plumlee and Nick Richards got dominated by New Orleans center Jonas Valanciunas, who had 30 points and 17 rebounds in only 29 minutes. New Orleans shot 32-for-37 from the free-throw line, making more than twice as many free throws as Charlotte took (the Hornets were 11-for-14).
Clifford had no problem with the foul calls. What he didn’t like was the fact that the Hornets kept fouling in the first place.
“The bigger thing is just the fouling,” said Clifford, who coached Charlotte from 2013-2018, got fired and then was rehired this summer to replace the coach who replaced him. “Just undisciplined basketball. I mean, just crazy. They got to the bonus early in the third quarter and they just started posting the ball, and we didn’t do what we’re supposed to do. And every time the ball went in there we’re fouling, hacking.
“It’s really just bad basketball, is what it is,” Clifford continued. “And I don’t care if it is the second game of the year. You’ve got to call it what it is. That’s what I just told the guys. We played hard…. But you can’t be minus-21 (in scoring differential) from the free-throw line and beat a good team. You can’t beat any team in this league. It’s just not going to happen.”
That Clifford is getting after his team this early in the season isn’t a great sign. He’s having to make early corrections for a team that had all of training camp to work on that sort of thing. Yes, the Hornets were without LaMelo Ball, who’s probably out for a few more games with a sprained ankle.
But what happened in the home opener point to the Hornets’ larger problem and the one that plagued them many times last season — a defense that has too many holes, especially in the paint.
“We had a lot of silly fouls,” Charlotte’s Gordon Hayward said. “We’re reaching. Our hands are down. We’re in their pockets and they just come straight through, and those are easy calls for the ref.”
The Hornets actually have the opposite problem as the Carolina Panthers, who have a decent defense but can’t score. The Hornets can score — they now have scored 129 and 112 points in their two games — but too often their defensive principles are lacking and they don’t stop anybody.
It’s very early, of course, and there have been some positive developments in the first two games. Terry Rozier is an able point guard when Ball isn’t around, and he had 23 points and 11 assists Friday, although he did turn an ankle late and was in a walking boot after the game as a precautionary measure.
Hayward is attacking the basket and shooting more than last year — he took only two 3-pointers in 19 shots Friday on the way to a team-high 26 points.
On the other hand, James Bouknight wasn’t good again. He went 0-for-5 for the second straight game and hasn’t made a shot so far this season.
Why Bouknight is playing at all is another issue entirely. But even when he is playing, he isn’t playing well.
As for the Hornets, perhaps this was just a blip.
But let’s be practical here — most likely it’s not.
This story was originally published October 22, 2022 at 7:00 AM with the headline "‘Just bad basketball.’ Only two games in, Charlotte Hornets coach Clifford gets angry."
