Hornets Drop Seventh Straight, Fall to Hawks 125-106

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Hornets head coach Steve Clifford challenged his team to play with more effort and focus on the defensive end following an overtime loss to the Detroit Pistons. Although the stat sheet fails to agree, the defense was more in sync in Friday's 125-106 loss to the Atlanta Hawks.

“I just told them, I thought our defense was a lot better," Clifford said. "The fouling just crushed us. (Trae) Young was terrific, and (Bogdan) Bogdanovic was great. When those two guys play like that, I don’t care who they’re playing against, they’re going to be in the game. We were much more purposeful. Even in the first quarter, we didn’t score offensively, but we got good shots, the ball was moving. I thought we had good energy. The first three quarters, our offense was good. It’s just the fouling. Those are fouls. We’ve got to stop. We’ve lost a few games, we’ve got the turnover thing, we’re a lot more consistent now and we’re not turning it over as much, that cost us. We’re minus-15 at the free-throw line, it’s hard to win. …Every time those guys are driving and you’re slapping down and stuff, it makes it hard to win. We did a lot of good things. We played with a lot of purpose. Obviously, having Gordon (Hayward) back helps a lot, you can see, Melo (Ball), too. It’s going to take a few games for them to get their conditioning and their rhythm and everything.”

As Clifford stated, sometimes there's just nothing you can do when those guys are hitting tough, contested shots. Young (31 pts) and Bogdanovic (28 pts) combined to go 9/15 from three-point range and 17/31 from the floor.

For the Hornets, LaMelo Ball singlehandedly kept the team in the game by knocking down 7-of-13 shots from deep. The rest of the team shot 8/30. In Gordon Hayward's first game back, he looked a bit sluggish as one would expect. He finished the night 3/9 from the field with nine points, five assists, and three rebounds. Aside from Ball, Terry Rozier was the only other member of the Hornets' starting five to hit double figures and he barely got there with just ten.

The Hornets will now begin a challenging six-game road trip that starts in Denver with the Nuggets on Sunday at 8 p.m. EST.

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