Another floundering outing wrapped up and Kelly Oubre was assessing how the Charlotte Hornets let another game slip out of their grasp.
Their losing streak had just extended to five straight games, and the swingman recalled the thing that immediately jumped off the piece of paper he scanned following the Hornets’ 108-100 loss to Washington on Monday night.
“To be honest with you, I only looked at the box sheet and I saw that I only had one rebound and like zero assists also,” Oubre said. “I’m just analyzing myself. Obviously our team, we are going to continue to stick with it, we’re just going to continue to watch the film, and break everything down, and get better at the things we’re not great at right now.”
That’s when Oubre, whose 20 points fueled a good chunk of the Hornets’ offense in a game that had a rather nondescript feel to it, put some of the onus of their current rough path on himself.
“But I’ve got to be better, straight up,” he said. “I’ve got to bring more energy to the all-around game. Crash the boards and not allow myself to get blocked out, and actually go get the ball. The same thing I tell Nick Richards every day: ‘Dominate the paint.’ Obviously, I’m not 7-foot, 240-pounds of muscle. But I have energy that I can execute going to get rebounds and make the right plays to my teammates.”
When wins are scarce and losses stack up, everything goes under the microscope. That’s what’s happening with the Hornets (3-8) right now, which is a reversal of their early-season fortunes. They haven’t celebrated a victory since that rousing night against Golden State 11 days into the 2022-23 campaign. For reference, when they host Portland on Wednesday, that will mark Day 22 of the season.
In their eyes, though, it’s not time to panic. For a number of reasons.
The simplest stems from the obvious: the Hornets’ slew of injuries. Despite being less than a month into their season, they’ve amassed 31 games missed due to a variety of bumps and bruises.
“We haven’t played one game with everybody healthy,” PJ Washington said. “So for everybody out there that’s thinking we are just losing or whatever, I mean we haven’t had our main guys at the end of the day. So once they get back, everything is going to change.”
LaMelo Ball has been relegated to being a spectator all season while waiting for his sprained left to heal sufficiently, and Cody Martin missed his 10th straight game nursing left quad soreness. Gordon Hayward sat out his second in a row with shoulder soreness after being deemed day-to-day last week.
At least the Hornets had Terry Rozier on the floor for a second consecutive outing following his return from a seven-game absence and Dennis Smith Jr. gutted it out after spraining his left ankle Saturday night. But until the Hornets get some of their key players back, bettering themselves as individuals in various aspects is important so collectively it all comes together.
There’s things to be learned in the meantime.
“I’ve just got to watch film,” Oubre said. “I have to watch film, continue to just dissect where I need to grow at. I feel great out there, but it’s just about playing the right way, playing the right way on every possession because every possession counts in this league. Especially when you get to the playoffs where one mistake can mess up a whole series.
“So, I’m kind of in that mind frame of putting myself somewhere where I want to be, and just being hard on myself for that reason exactly. Because we can’t be there and looking like a deer-in-headlights not understanding what’s going on when we could have worked each and every game throughout the season, and had that same energy and intensity like we were in the playoffs.”
Team-wise, the Hornets are showing some alarming trends that have to be corrected. At the forefront? Their rough starts.
In their past four games, the Hornets were outscored 124-89 in the first quarter. Their closest was a one-point deficit in Chicago on Nov. 3. Something’s amiss and coach Steve Clifford knows it.
“Usually every year with every team, like it could be the second night of back-to-backs,” he said. “This is the third time. This wasn’t as bad … But in Orlando we played poorly, in Memphis we played poorly. And these are the three games we’ve played where we had a day off before. So, you play your back-to-back and you take your day. And we’ve struggled, so we are going to obviously to look at that and find a way to get our energy up on the days we have an extra day off.”
That will happen later this week in Miami following Wednesday’s home game against the Trail Blazers, when the Hornets travel to play the Heat on Thursday and square off against their Southeast Division rivals again two nights later. They insist their mentality and resolve remains strong in spite of their current swoon.
“Hungry,” Oubre said. “Just hungry to win. Hungry to play well, hungry to protect our home court. Just hungry to win, man. I would say we’re not as upbeat as we usually are, obviously, when it comes with a five-game losing streak. But we’re still together. We’re still laughing, we’re still talking.
“But we’re still together. We just know that there’s another level we can get to, and that’s kind of the bright light at the end of the tunnel. We’re going to continue to work, we’re going to continue to fight, and everything’s going to turn around.”
The reinforcements probably can’t return fast enough for a team that got off to a surprising 3-3 start thanks to clobbering San Antonio and Atlanta by a combined 44 points before taking down Golden State in overtime. This isn’t how the Hornets envisioned things.
Luckily they have 71 games remaining to get it together.
“We are just pushing through,” Washington said. “That’s all it is. We’ve got to come out with the same attitude and mentality each and every night. In this league, you can lose 10 in a row and then win five straight. So, that’s just how it goes. Obviously, we have guys out. So, just take it with a grain of salt and just keep it going forward.”
