There’s something about all this that feels familiar for Miles Bridges.
As the Charlotte Hornets’ longest-tenured player, he’s the only one who’s been around for these last four seasons. He has a deep understanding of how things transpired for them during the waning weeks. Whether it’s flashing back to his rookie year in 2018-19 when the Hornets stumbled in a season finale that foiled their postseason chances, or staggering down the stretch last year and getting clobbered in the play-in tournament, there’s no shortage of disappointments.
Wary of a repeat, Bridges has found himself rather chatty with his teammates, explaining the Hornets’ most recent history over the final critical weeks.
“Yeah, I’ve been preaching that since we got down to like 20 games left,” Bridges said Saturday night. “I was just saying, ‘I’ve been here before and all three years when we could’ve made the playoffs we didn’t finish like we wanted to.’ So I just want this year to be different. Everyone’s buying into it and we’re playing good.”
The Hornets have looked the part during a winning streak that now stands at four games following their thorough 129-108 victory over Dallas at Spectrum Center. They took care of the short-handed Mavericks, riding ball movement, hot shooting and, yes, even defense.
It’s yet another game they needed given the tightness of the Eastern Conference standings. The Hornets (36-35) enter Sunday’s action in ninth place in the conference; a half-game ahead of Atlanta, one game behind eighth-place Brooklyn — which happens to be next Sunday’s opponent — and four games in the loss column off seventh-place Toronto.
Times are tense.
“It is fun, stressful, exciting,” Hornets coach James Borrego said. “That is the beauty of this game — all the above. That is why we do this, though. It is a beautiful game and it stretches you, grows you and this is where you want to be. You want to be in the fight and the ring here, just making things happen. It will be painful at times, pretty at times and that is the beauty of the sport.
“I am just happy that we stuck together through the highs and the lows. We stuck together and that is all that we can control. And I think sharing of the ball reflects that and defensive communication reflects that.”
Just in time, too, because they could use some more stability in those areas.
The Hornets are kind of like Red Panda, the popular halftime act that makes the rounds at arenas across the country and entertains the masses with her captivating, intriguing routine. See, she carefully loads multiple porcelain-style bowls on the tip of her high-heel shoes before flicking them up to rest comfortably on her head, drawing gasps from the crowd.
That’s essentially the gist of these Hornets, the very thing that makes them so problematic to comprehend. They have a penchant for making things look extremely difficult and scarier than they probably should be. It’s is part of the reason why they’ve hovered around the .500 mark for a hefty portion of the last month. They are consistently erratic, leaving you wondering which version is going to show up during that particular sequence. Or quarter. Or half.
Everybody got another dose of that in the initial 24 minutes against Dallas, when the Hornets came out on fire and built a 16-point edge. Still, they found themselves trailing by one at the intermission, an undoubtedly frustrating result given the positive momentum built up for most of the half. The Hornets’ mood shifted slightly from the spirited play that directly led to their huge first-half advantage and that’s when some of the newer locker room voices like Isaiah Thomas and Montrezl Harrell delivered their individual speeches.
“It’s just our vets staying on us,” said Bridges, who’s averaging 23.5 points per game during the winning streak. “I’ve never been to the playoffs. So I.T., Gordon (Hayward), Trez, Terry (Rozier) all those guys — Mason (Plumlee) — that have been to the playoffs, they are telling us what to do in those moments. Me, Melo (Ball) and the other guys that haven’t been to the playoffs, we’ve just been listening to them. I.T. and Trez, they did a great job of just coming in and calming us down.
“You know when we went down one going into halftime? We would have lost that game if we didn’t have those vets. They’ve been doing a great job of being there for us.”
Those words of encouragement worked because after halftime, right on cue, the ball movement returned. The 19 assists on 24 second-half field goals were on par with how they’ve shared it lately. The Hornets have recorded 30 or more assists in four straight games, marking just the fourth time in franchise history that’s happened and the first occasion since the middle of the 1996-97 season.
During this string of wins, the Hornets are averaging 34.3 assists per game.
“It correlates a lot,” PJ Washington said. “We’re scoring with the best of them. To have 129 tonight is just great. We moved the ball. Everybody touches it, everybody’s shooting, everybody’s scoring. When we play like that it’s hard to beat us.”
Same goes for those outings they’re digging in defensively. Washington said they have a goal of limiting teams to 109 points or fewer and they were right at that threshold against the Mavs. That’s the side of the ball that matters most for the Hornets because nothing is going wrong for an offense that ranks second in the league in scoring.
“If we play defense, we win games,” Washington said. “We all know that and that’s our main focus on winning the games, try to guard people and stop them from doing what they do. The past couple of games we’ve been doing that and we’ve been winning. So we’re just trying to keep doing that.”
It has them on the verge of matching their longest winning streak this season, something they can achieve if they get past New Orleans on Monday. That would also put Bridges one step closer to forgetting about the end-of-season troubles throughout his first three years in the league.
“You always want to be playing your best basketball at this time,” Borrego said. “We are getting healthier and some rhythm with our group. We are playing well together and playing hard, and that is all I can ask of this group. Every single night going out and battling and having this home crowd behind us is a positive for us. I just loved the mentality of this group overall. The starters, the bench. There is synergy and connection out there and we just have to sustain it.”
