Hornets Panic Meter: Time to Worry About Charlotte?

The Charlotte Hornets may be at rock bottom after letting the Boston Celtics come into Charlotte and whallop them by almost 40 points. It's their second massive blowout loss (47 to the Atlanta Hawks), and the overall point differential is -13.9, the third-worst in the NBA.

How panicked are we?

Matt Alquiza: 3

If you played out the timeline these Hornets have followed since September 1st to now 100 times and ranked them from best to worst, this would have to be near the bottom, right?

There's a real Murphy’s Law vibe permeating throughout the Spectrum Center right now. Injuries, shots not falling, boneheaded turnovers… It's an absolute mess. However, I'm still bullish on the team’s ability to put together a good stretch of hoops when (if) they get healthy.

Evan Campos: 8

The Charlotte Hornets' offense is just a disaster right now. There's no other way to put it. This team isn't scoring the basketball anywhere close to well enough to beat good teams in today's NBA. There's a holistic lack of play creation/play initiation and a lack of someone who can consistently turn the corner, create the initial advantage, and draw multiple defenders to the basketball.

These are all things LaMelo Ball did at an elite level for the Bugs last season. The substantial drop-off from a point guard who received All-NBA votes as the driver behind a top-five offense to what Charlotte has gotten from that position group this season has been staggering.

Charlotte fields a rotation consisting of so many offensively perimeter-oriented players, including their current best players, whose greatest offensive skill set is shooting the basketball off the catch and off the bounce. Having nearly all of them, outside of Grayson Allen, shooting as if there's a collective lid on the basket through the first 10 games is a massive problem, obviously. The entire concept of how the Hornets are going to win games is taking and making a high volume of three-point shots.

When those shots aren't falling, this Charlotte club doesn't have many other avenues to quality offense. And then there are the turnovers, which have been absolutely brutal. Again, that speaks to the lack of a true high-usage lead ball handler who can organize the offense and make the right reads with the basketball.

The team's shooting percentages will get better. Frankly, they can't get much worse. And with Coby White getting his legs back under him and seeing more minutes and usage going forward, there's at least some hope that he can help jump-start this offense and get Charlotte out of their current sub-100 offensive rating.

But the offensive tape has been an incredibly bleak watch at the moment. Your defense and two-way rebounding can only keep you competitive for so long when you're struggling this badly to put points on the board.

Schuyler Callihan: 6.5

Charlotte Hornets forward Brandon Miller (24) sets the play against the Boston Celtics during the first half | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Injuries have played a big role in this extremely slow start, although the offense still has no reason to be this abysmal. Until Coby White is fully unleashed and Kon Knueppel is back and healthy, it’s a little unfair to say Jeff Peterson’s plan won’t ever work, but right now, it’s not looking so hot.

This team needs playmaking from the point guard spot, and that is exactly what he traded away for Naz Reid and a first-round pick years down the road. There’s still plenty of time to turn this thing around, but this group doesn’t have the firepower to go on a magical run like they did a year ago after a slow start to the year, so the clock is ticking.

Zach Roberts: 8.5

The remaining two is because we haven't seen the trio in action, and the numbers between those three last year were incredible. But everything else has been positively horrendous. Coby White is rusty, sure, but he's also been dreadful.

Brandon Miller is not a leading man, clearly. Even Moussa Diabaté has been bad. It's as if LaMelo Ball was the one thing holding everything together, and no matter how well the Hornets seemingly did to offset that self-inflicted loss, it hasn't worked out. I'm very concerned.

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