Charles Lee Discusses Urgency, Long Homestand, Health of the Roster + More

The Charlotte Hornets return to Spectrum Center for a seven-game homestead in their final 14 games of the regular season. Ahead of Tuesday’s matchup against the Miami Heat, the Hornets hold the 10th spot in the Eastern Conference Standings.

Hornets head coach Charles Lee joined the media via Zoom following the team’s practice on Monday to discuss the final regular season stretch, a postseason push, and more.

On the upcoming 7-game homestead:

"I would say the thing that we have talked about a ton, especially after you go back and watch the film, I think that our ability to guard the ball has to continue to improve. I think it's great that we get to play Miami again. You've talked about it and worked on some things. Their style of play definitely challenges you, in order to guard the ball, and that's part of keeping the ball out the paint from the individual defender, but also having great shift activity around it.

"I think that when we are playing at our highest level, I can go back and watch film, and I’m going to see 10 clips where I just kind of write “connected defense” and there's 2 or 3 or 4 different people, different defensive techniques that you kind of see on display where the guys are helping cover for each other. I think that over the last few games, there's been some good defensive clips, but it's not as many of those great connected team defense clips so I want to see us improve in that area.

"I would say offensively, picking one theme, would just be how do we combat physicality and pressure. I think we've seen a ton of teams starting to try to pick us up full court, a ton of teams trying to just be more physical with us, bump us off our spots, slow us down with our pace, and slow down our half-court execution at times.

"I think that we have to be more committed in transition to play with the pass aheads and play with the pass across, which means the ball handler, but also the guys running the floor, have to have more of an awareness and a purpose when they're running and see the ball and make sure you're looking back to be an outlet. Then the half-court just executing at a higher clip. Some of that execution is our screening. How do you screen a little bit better to create some advantages? Off-ball and pick and roll."

On having a healthy team in the final stretch of the regular season:

"One of the things I believe in as a coach, I think that our staff believes in and even our players are really committed to it, and they understand, obviously, the open-mindedness and the ability to earn minutes.

"You have to earn the opportunity to be out on the court, and you show us how you are going to impact winning. How are you gonna impact the team? It's not always scoring. Obviously, that is the name of the game, to put the ball in the basket, and you got to have some guys out there to do that. But then, if you're not one of those high-volume scorers, how are you also impacting the game with your defensive intensity, your ability to rebound on both ends of the floor? I think that's how my rotation starts to work as we get to this time of the season, I want to have the most competitive, most together guys out on the floor."

On Josh Green’s impact since returning from injury:

"He is a guy that doesn't rely on scoring at a high clip. That's not going to change how he approaches, how he plays, how he impacts the game.

"There's so many things that have been impressive from him since he's come back. The two areas that I have really seen an uptick, especially from last year. Number one is he's more comfortable offensively. I think that there's been a handful of clips a game where he's rebounding, or he's getting a steal, or somebody's passing ahead to him, and he's driving, he's getting a piece of the paint. He's made a couple dump-off passes to our bigs. He's had a couple big kick-out threes for us.

"The second area has just been his defensive impact. There are so many times during a game you’re watching him sprint down in transition, stop the ball, or block a shot, or get a deflection, and then he's closing back out to somebody, keeping them out of the paint, and then coming over and hitting somebody to get a defensive rebound. There's just this multiple-effort mindset from him defensively that I think becomes infectious and contagious with our group."

On urgency as the season winds down:

"I would say that our group is so obsessed with daily improvement and how we work. It's great to be back home, because I feel like this is the opportunity for us to tighten up what we do on both ends of the floor. Really productive practice today.

"I think that we have a firm understanding of what the landscape of the standings looks like, but I think our group is just so committed to each other and committed to just trying to get better every day and every game that we've been able to learn a ton about ourselves from every game that we've had so far. I think that has been a lot of the focal point.

"I'm not feeling urgency of standings, but really just a self-motivation or a team collective motivation to just be better every game and every day."

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