Heat VS Hornets (Game 7)

Heat Win Series 4-3

The Heat are moving on. What just happened in this game that left the Hornets going home with their heads down? Let's break it down.

There are 2 people that the Hornets did a really bad job defending. Gerald Green was great in the game. When you let Green score off the bench, it's going to hurt you. The Heat's starting 5 is so talented that if you let their bench come in and do damage, they are going to beat you. Next, Goran Dragic. The guy had 25 points on the night. He was amazing with his decisions. He saw that the defense was laying off of him and he took it to the rim. His decision making and his play in the pick and roll lead this Heat team to the win. Goran Dragic played great offensively. He also defended Kemba Walker very well. Kemba ended the night with 9 points and he shot just 18.8% from the field.

I thought that the Hornets shouldn't have had Frank Kaminski out there. He was brutal. He shot 20% from the field. What made me mad was that the guy shot 15 attempts from the field. He made 3. Dragic shot 17 attempts. When you aren't hitting shots, you can't keep shooting. The team should've taken him out of the game but never did.

The Heat had GREAT interior defense. They limited the Hornets to just 22 points in the paint. Meanwhile, the Heat had 58 points in the paint. This is where the Hornets got killed. The paint is the easiest place to shoot. They let the Heat get 58 points in from close range.

Anyways, the Hornet's season is over. The Heat on the other hand, have to get back to work soon. They have a big series to play against the Raptors who have struggled of late. They need to take advantage of this team while they are down.

Heat VS Hornets (Game 4)

Series Tied 2-2

This was the Kemba Walker game we were waiting for. On the Heat side, nobody really took over. This wasn't the Heat's best night but they did move the ball well.

What really kept the Heat in this game was their rebounding. The team wanted to rebound. It wasn't just Hassan Whiteside either. 4 of the 5 Heat starters had 7 rebounds. The Heat had 46 boards while the Hornets had 36. What was really confusing to me is that the Hornets had more second chance points than the Heat. The Heats only had 5 second chance points while the Hornets had 10.

Two things really killed the Heat. First, they had no fast break points in the game. Second, they only had 30 points in the paint. I think that against the Hornets, you need easy points. A great way to do this is to run the court and get to the paint. Taking 26 shots around the basket doesn't give you enough easy points. You need to be taking more shots around there.

It was really the opposite for the Hornets though. They were getting good shots from the paint. Hassan Whiteside always looked late on rotations to me. He did a bad job on the inside. The Heat also fouled quite a lot due to just bad defensive positioning. The Hornets went 25-30 from the free throw line as they took advantage of this. The Heat need to be much more disciplined defensively.

The fact that the Heat shot bad didn't help them. They really need to take it inside the paint more was part of it. The Heat aren't the best outside shooters so they need to get inside more. Hassan Whiteside needs to get in more pick and roll situations with Goran Dragic. It think that the Heat need to get back to their ball movement, defense, and pick and roll more if they are going to win this series, because they haven't looked that great.

Heat VS Hornets (Game 2)

Heat Lead Series 2-0

The Hornets did a much better job on offense in this game, but they are still in no position to win. Changes need to be made, and we're going to take a look at what those changes should be.

The Hornets defense is in dire need of a change. Only 1 player shot under 50% for the Heat, and that was Amar'e Stoudemire who only attempted 3 shots and made 1. Everybody else shot at least 50% from the field. That is concerning. Hassan Whiteside made all of his shots and everytime he shot it seemed like a Hornets guard was on him. The Hornets had some really poor defensive rotations. However, Miami did a great job of finding the open player and swinging the ball around the court.

Miami shot 57.9% from the field, but Charlotte did have a good offense going. Kemba Walker picked his game up since game 1 as he had 29 points in the game. However, despite Kemba's performance, many of the other players failed to produce. Marvin Williams shot 0-10 in the game. Nicolas Batum was 3-11. Jeremy Lin was only 2-7 from the field. The whole team shot just 1-16 from 3-point range. Al Jefferson had a great game though. He finished the night with 25 points as he shot 12-17 from the field. However, he played horrible defense when he was on the floor. He couldn't guard the paint against this Heat team and it was actually better to have Cody Zeller out on the floor. Al Jefferson had a defensive rating of 131.9, which is really poor.

The Hornets are also not taking advantage of their youth. They did not run the floor. They had just 1 fastbreak point which was off a Courtney Lee free throw. If you are playing against a verteran Heat team, you need to get off and running to score, which they didn't do.

One thing that kept the Hornet from being blown out was their offensive rebounding. They had 15 offensive rebounds in the game. However, they only had 11 2nd chance points. The 2nd chance points are something that they must take advantage of in this series.

The Heat are obviously the more experience team and their players are playing great defense while being very unselfish with the basketball. They are moving it along the perimeter well, but their passes were few because guy were just left open. The hustle isn't there for the Hornets and hopefully we see a better effort from them on their home court.

NBA Inside The Player Of The Week (Jan. 12-18)

Kemba Walker took over in the game against the Jazz. He had 52 points. Not only did he help take a win vs the Jazz, he helped his team in any way he could this week. Kemba had multiple stellar performances this week while making very few mistakes. Let's take a look at Kemba's play, shall we?

The fact that Kemba Walker posted up 28 PPG this week, is amazing alone. However, Kemba did much more than scoring. He averaged 5.8 APG and 4.3 RPG as well. In the game against the Jazz, not only did he have 52 points, but he almost posted a triple-double, getting 8 assists and 9 rebounds. The Jazz couldn't really double-team Kemba because he was able to find his teammates so easily.

The pick and roll game worked very well for Kemba this week, and you can see it in his game vs the Jazz. Most of Kemba's points either came from him being the ball-handler in PnR or being on the weak side off a PnR with a catch and shoot as you can see in the video above.

Kemba's shooting performance was amazing this week. He shot 49.4% from the field, 54.8% from 3-point, and a whopping 95% from the FT line. Those are 50-50-90 numbers. If he keeps shooting like this, the Hornets will win a lot of games.

Defensively, Kemba looked okay. He averaged 1.8 steals this week. The Hornets overall did a really bad job, especially when defending the PnR. I put most of the blame on Cody Zeller and Marvin Williams for losing the roll man consistently. Hopefully they can pick that up because there defensive rating is really high and you don't want that. Other than that, Kemba looked great. He did a great job of not turning the ball over this week. He only averaged 1.3 turnovers per game.

Kemba played really well this week and that is why he deserves the NBA Inside The Player Of The Week award. While his team didn't win all of their games this week, they were able to get together some big wins, because of Kemba's performance. If Kemba keeps playing at this level and the Hornets can pick up their defense, it would be hard to see this team losing many games. 

 

The Hornets Are Slowly Fading

Kemba Walker comes up from behind, Blocks Him! Kemba, last second shot! Wins It!

That's what the beginning of the season was like for the Hornets. However, newly acquired, Lance Stephenson, was not fitting well with this group. Coach Clifford started to bench Lance. Then the most devastating thing that could happen to a Hornets fan, happens. Kemba Walker goes down. He is injured. Small Forward, Gary Neal, was having a great season with this Hornets team. It was impossible for him or Lance to come off the bench and play Point Guard though.

Point Guard, Zach LaVine for the Minnesota Timberwolves was about to participate in the Dunk competition as well as the Rising Stars challenge. He was seeing a lack of minutes, and with Ricky Rubio coming back from injury, he would be placed behind not only Rubio, but Mo Williams too. The Timberwolves made the decision to trade off Mo Williams to get some playing time for a rising Zach LaVine. Of course, the Hornets needed a great veteran Point Guard. Mo Williams had 52 points with the Timberwolves. Obviously this guy could help the Hornets, right?

The Hornets traded off Gary Neal for the Timberwolves, Mo Williams. Mo already was familiar with the Hornets center, Al Jefferson, who had played with Mo on the Jazz. Mo was an immediate impact when he came to the team. They ended up going on a winning streak, Mo won the Eastern Conference player of the week award, and Kemba Walker was close to returning.

Kemba Walker's return didn't help them. It made them worse. Kemba couldn't find rhythem, and Mo couldn't produce that well off the bench. They ended up a couple games out of the playoffs. Now to make matters worse, team center, Al Jefferson has a knee injury. Poor Al could be benched for the rest of the season. As the Celtics and the Nets are on the rise, the Hornets are slowly fading.