Hornets owner Michael Jordan couldn’t have been happy watching his team fall to 7-21 on the season. While every loss is a step closer to Victor Wembanyama, the former Bulls superstar still likely expected better from his team, who recently welcomed LaMelo Ball back into the lineup.
While Ball himself was great, the Hornets showed absolutely no fight on the defensive end, giving up 141 points to a Pistons squad that has been one of the worst teams in the NBA all season.
Clearly fed up and frustrated with the performance of his players, head coach Steve Clifford followed up the loss with one of the most brutally honest post-game press conferences we’ve heard all season.
“Until we care about something besides how many points we score, we’re not gonna win much,” said Clifford. “We can’t play like that. Five of the last seven games we’ve been pretty good on offense but we are playing no defense, not one guy. There’s not a bright spot. We don’t run back on defense, we don’t guard the ball, our pick-and-roll stuff — all stuff that was good, I think we were as high as 12th or 13th in defense about 10 games ago and we’re right back to where we started, ground zero, where all we wanna be is ‘let’s try to outscore the other team.’ It doesn’t work in the NBA. What I just told them this is either you build a game that will actually work at the end of the year when you play the important games or you don’t. That’s it. That’s what the NBA’s all about. It’s not that we don’t have the talent to do it, all we care about is scoring, that’s it. If you’re gonna try to play like that, you better have five All-Stars and we don’t have that kind of talent. So, it’s not something that will work.”
Steve Clifford after the Hornets 141-134 loss to the Pistons: "Until we care about something besides how many points we score we're not gonna win much…We are playing no defense. Not one guy. There's not a bright spot." pic.twitter.com/013l93vANn
— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) December 15, 2022
It was a rare moment of uncut honesty, but it was rather appropriate given the state of the Hornets right now.
Where Do The Hornets Go From Here?
Only time will tell how the Hornets respond to the crushing statement from their coach, but there’s only so far they can go with the talent they have. For now, they sit in the lead for Wembanyama, but there is a sense that Michael Jordan wants more from his team.
“The hurdle is getting the owner to go along with it,” an NBA GM told Heavy Sports. “It is Michael Jordan. He has never OK’d something like that and it is not clear he would, even if it gets bad this year, even if it puts them in a good spot in the draft for Victor (Wembanyama). He has been pretty strong against tanking. Hard to see another way forward for them now, though.”
Truth be told, the Hornets probably don’t have to try and tank. They’re bad enough to do that on their own.
Hopefully, Michael Jordan makes some moves that set his team up to improve over the next few years.
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