The Pacers come to Charlotte tonight for their first of 2 games at the spectrum center. The Hornets look to close the gap and move up to the upper echelon of 10 loss teams in the east. The Hornets have been playing underwhelming, uninspiring, dogshit basketball under Borrego the past few weeks. Borrego needs to do change something; maybe switch defenses, change rotations, play different bigs, yell at the players, bark at the refs, throw a chair, SOMETHING. His monotone reflections before and after games almost makes me understand the players lack of enthusiasm, a coach should be a motivator or at least evoke some sort of emotions. The Hornets have been playing flat as hell, might be time to start photoshopping cigs into Borrego’s mouth a la Jay Cutler because it really seems like he “don’t careeeee”.
The Pacers should not be as upset as the Hornets because they are sitting pretty at 4th in the eastern conference and only a half game behind the Bucks in the central. The Pacers also received tremendous news that Caris LeVert’s kidney growth has been successfully operated on with no future treatment needed, after the trade that may have quite literally saved his life. I could see Domantas Sabonis being a real problem for the Hornets tonight but he is listed as a game time decision so it may not come to that. Just checked Sabonis’ stat line for the last matchup against us and whoooof, lets hope he doesn’t put up another +39 on us shooting 80% from the field.
Hornets Keys
Emotion – Playing with emotion is very clearly not going to happen because of Borrego but someone has to step up and give us some enthusiasm (or something).
Defend 3’s – can I get a closeout? Please? Anyone? If the hornets can hold them to under 43% (not asking for much here) from three I would be happy and stfu about the closeouts, at least temporarily.
Bigs – If Carey and Richards cannot give us anything better than current Bizmack then we might as well send their asses to Greensboro (I don’t think they suck that bad, Hornets just need to see what they have here)
Pacers Keys
Myles Turner – With Sabonis likely out, Myles Turner needs to take advantage of the Hornets poor post defense.
Defend Gordon – The Pacers do not matchup versus Hayward very well and he has been on a heater lately.
Hugo CLT 