Morning Buzz: Hornets beat Kings on the road

P.J. Washington impressed again and Charlotte picked up their first road win. News, notes and more in this Morning Buzz edition.

The Charlotte Hornets won again. Behind 23 points from PJ Washington, 12 points and 15 rebounds from Cody Zeller and 22 points from Terry Rozier, the Hornets beat the Sacramento Kings 118-111 on the road to improve to 2-3 on the season.

Charlotte’s bench outscored Sacramento’s 41-22, led again by Devonte’ Graham, who had 12 points and nine assists. The Hornets came back from a 14-point deficit and hit 16 three-pointers.

Of P.J. Washington, head coach James Borrego told Fox Sports Southeast: “I thought he imposed his will on that game immediately when he stepped on the floor.”

Here’s a collection of news, notes, highlights, quotes and stats in the world of the Hornets from the past few days…

• Cody Zeller is expanding his game, y’all. Through the first six years of the Indiana product’s career, he connected on just 10 three-pointers. This season, through just four games, he’s flushed four. Against the Clippers he went three-of-four from behind the arc. Zeller also has four double-doubles in four games this season, matching his total from last year.
• Impressive play here from arguably the two most impressive Hornets so far this season.

https://twitter.com/QCHspencer/status/1189135703990505472?s=20

• Speaking of Devonte Graham, he joined some rare company when he snatched a double-double off the bench against the Clippers. The only other Hornets to have 12 assists in a double-double off-the-bench performance are Muggsy Bogues, Tony Bennett and Brevin Knight. Bogues did it four times, according to Sam Perley. That outing of 14 points and 12 assists was Graham’s first career double-double.
• Also, Graham leads all reserves (players coming off the bench) in three-pointers made (17) and assists (38) this season. Graham’s 7.6 assists per-game are ninth best in the league. His
• Apparently, Mitchell & Ness is thinking about bringing back a Master P era Hornets jersey. Indeed, Percy Robert Miller – as the government knows him – suited up for the Hornets during the 1998 preseason.
• The Greensboro Swarm announced that it had extended its partnership with the Greensboro YMCA through the 2021 season.
• Here’s P.J. Washington’s first-half shot chart from his game against the Kings. Not too shabby, rook.

• Washington finished that game with 23 points, eight rebounds and three assists. Among all rookies this season, he is sixth in scoring with 15.8 points per-game. He is also shooting 52 percent from three-point land.
  
  
It’s funny to think back about how, just a month ago at Hornets’ media day, Washington was asked about spending time in the G-League. He was jokingly asked about it again after the Hornets’ season-opening win over the Bulls.“I used it as motivation,” Washington said. It’s not a bad thing to go down to the G-League – to produce and get some playing time – but I definitely didn’t want to. I wanted to be up here on the biggest stage and try to improve my game every day.”

• The Hornets' next game is Saturday at Golden State and – suddenly – the Hornets have a real chance to win. Steph Curry is going to miss that game, and likely several weeks of play, after breaking his left hand.